
T.Phillips R.A.pinx. 



E.Fiiiden sculp. 



^^^y^C-^-^Ck.^^ 



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c/^ ^- C-ty^t^y-y—^J^^^-:^-^ 



Zondon, J^ohn Mrirra^, AU^emarl^ S. ' 



SPECIMENS 



TABLE TALK 



SA^Il'EL TAYLOE COLEEIDGE. 



NEW EDITION. 




LONDON: 

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET. 
1S52. 



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T^,/;. 



LONDON : 
BKAUbURy AND KVANS, PRINTERS, TVUITEFRIARS. 



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JAMES GILLMAN, Esq. 

Of the Grove, Hig;hgate, 



MKS. GILLMAN, 

Ei^ts Folutne 

IS GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED. 



PREFACE. 

IT is nearly fifteen years since I was^ for the first 
time^ enabled to become a frequent and attentive 
\"isiter in Mr. Coleridge^s domestic society. His 
exhibition of intellectnal power in living discourse 
struck me at once as unique and transcendent ; and 
upon my return home^ on the very first evening which 
I spent with him after my boyhood^ I co m mitted to 
writings as well as I could^ the principal topics of his 
conversation in liis own words. I had no settled 
design at that time of continuing the work^ but 
simply made the note in something like a spirit of 
vexation that such a strain of music as I had just 
heard^ should not last for ever. "What I did once^ I 
was easily induced by the same feeling to do again : 
and wheU; after many years of affectionate communion 
between us^ the painful existence of my revered rela- 
tive on earth was at length finished in peace^ my 
occasional notes of what he had said in my presence 
had grown to a masS; of which this volume contains 
only such parts as seem fit for present pubhcation. 
I know^ better than any one can tell me^ how in- 
adequately these specimens represent the pecuhar 



PREFACE. 



splendour and individuality of Mr. Coleridge^s con- 
versation. How should it be otherwise? Who 
could always follow to the turning-point his long 
arrow-flights of thought? "Who could fix those 
ejaculations of lights those tones of a prophet, which 
at times have made me bend before him as before an 
inspired man ? Such acts of spirit as these were too 
subtle to be fettered down on paper; they live — if 
they can live anywhere — in the memories alone of 
those who witnessed them. Yet I would fain hope 
that these pages will prove that all is not lost ; — that 
something of the wisdom, the learning, and the 
eloquence of a great man^s social converse has been 
snatched from forgetfulness, and endowed with a 
permanent shape for general use. And although, in 
the judgment of many persons, I may incur a serious 
responsibility by tliis publication, I am, upon the 
whole, willing to abide the result, in confidence that 
the fame of the loved and lamented speaker will lose 
nothing hereby, and that the cause of Truth and of 
Goodness will be every way a gainer. This sprig, 
though slight and immature, may yet become its 
place, in the Poet^s wreath of honour, among flowers 
of graver hue. 

If the favour shown to several modern instances of 
works nominally of the same description as the pre- 
sent were alone to be considered, it might seem that 
the old maxim, that nothing ought to be said of the 
dead but what is good, is in a fair way of being 
dilated into an understanding that everytliing is good 



PREFACE. 



that has been said by the dead. The following pages 
do not^ I trnst^ stand in need of so much indulgence. 
Their contents may not^ in every particular passage^ 
be of great intrinsic importance ; but they can hardly 
be without some^ and^ I hope^ a worthy^ interest^ as 
coming from the lips of one^ at leasts of the most 
extraordinary men of the age ; whilst^ to the best of 
my knowledge and intention^ no li^dng person^s name 
is introduced^ whether for praise or for blame^ except 
on literary or political grounds of common notoriety. 
Upon the justice of the remarks here pubhshed^ it 
would be out of place in me to say anything ; and a 
commentary of that kind is the less needed^ as^ in 
almost every instance^ the principles upon which the 
speaker founded his observations are expressly stated^ 
and may be satisfactorily examined by themselves. 
But^ for the purpose of general elucidation^ it seemed 
not improper to add a few notes^ and to make some 
quotations from Mr. Coleridge^s own works ; and_, in 
doing sOj I was in addition actuated by an earnest 
wish to call the attention of reflecting minds in general 
to the views of political^ morale and religious philo- 
sophy contained iu those works^ which^ through an 
extensive^ but now decreasing^ prejudice^ have hitherto 
been deprived of that acceptance with the public 
wliich their great preponderating merits deserve^ and 
wiQ, as I believe^ finally obtain. And I can truly 
say^ that if, in the course of the perusal of this little 
work^ any one of its readers shall gain a clearer iusight 
into the deep and pregnant principles^ in the light of 



PEEFACE. 



which Mr. Coleridge was accustomed to regard God 
and the Worlds — I shall look upon the pubHcation as 
fortunate^ and consider myself abundantly rewarded 
for whatever trouble it has cost me. 

A cursory inspection will show that this volume 
lays no claim to be ranked with those of Boswell in 
point of dramatic interest. Coleridge differed not 
more from Johnson in every characteristic of intellect, 
than in the habits and circumstances of his life, during 
the greatest part of the time in which I was intimately 
conversant with him. He was naturally very fond of 
society, and continued to be so to the last ; but the 
almost unceasing ill-health with which he was afflicted, 
after fifty, confined him for many months in every 
year to his own room, and, most commonly, to his 
bed. He was then rarely seen except by single 
visiters ; and few of them would feel any disposition 
upon such occasions to interrupt him, whatever might 
have been the length or mood of his discourse. And 
indeed, although I have been present in mixed com- 
pany, where Mr. Coleridge has been questioned an. 
opposed, and the scene has been amusing for the 
moment — I own that it was always much more de- 
lightful to me to let the river wander at its own sweet 
will, unruffled by aught but a certain breeze of emotion 
which the stream itseM produced. If the course it 
took was not the shortest, it was generally the most 
beautiful; and what you saw by the way was as 
worthy of note as the ultimate object to which you 
were journeying. It is possible, indeed, that Coleridge 



PREFACE. 



did not, in fact, possess the precise gladiatorial power 
of Johnson ; yet he understood a sword-play of his 
own ; and I have, upon several occasions, seen him 
exhibit brilliant proofs of its effectiveness upon dis- 
putants of considerable pretensions in their particular 
lines. But he had a genuine dislike of the practice 
in himseK or others, and no shght provocation could 
move him to any such exertion. He was, indeed, to 
my observation, more distinguished from other great 
men of letters by his moral thirst after the Truth— 
the ideal truth — ^in his own mind, than by his merely 
intellectual qualifications. To leave the every-day 
circle of society, in which the literary and scientific 
rarely — the rest never— break through the spell of 
personality; — where Anecdote reigns everlastingly 
paramount and exclusive, and the mildest attempt to 
generahse the Babel of facts, and to control temporary 
and individual phenomena by the application of eternal 
and overruling principles, is unintelligible to many, 
?^nd disagreeable to more; — to leave this species of 
.nverse — i£ converse it deserves to be called — and 
pass an entire day with Coleridge, was a marvellous 
change indeed. It was a Sabbath past expression 
deep, and tranquil, and serene. You came to a man 
who had travelled in many countries, and in critical 
tunes ; who had seen and felt the world in most of 
its ranks and in many of its vicissitudes and weak- 
nesses ; one to whom aU literature and genial art were 
absolutely subject, and to whom, with a reasonable 
allowance as to technical details, all science was in a 



PREFACE. 



most extraordinary degree familiar. Throughout a 
long-drawn summer^s day would this man talk to you 
in low^ equable^ but clear and musical^ tones^ con- 
cerning things human and divine; marshalling all 
history, harmonising all experiment, probing the 
depths of your consciousness, and revealing visions 
of glory and of terror to the imagination ; but pouring 
withal such floods of light upon the mind, that you 
might, for a season, like Paul, become bUnd in the 
very act of conversion. And this he would do, with- 
out so much as one allusion to himseK, without a 
word of reflection on others, save when any given act 
fell naturally in the way of his discourse, — ^without 
one anecdote that was not proof and illustration of a 
previous position ; — gratifying no passion, indulging 
no caprice, but, with a calm mastery over your soul, 
leading you onward and onward for ever through a 
thousand windings, yet with no pause, to some mag- 
nificent point in which, as in a focus, all the parti- 
coloured rays of his discourse should converge in 
light. In all this he was, in truth, your teacher and 
guide; but in a little while you might forget that 
he was other than a fellow-student and the com- 
panion of your way, — so playful was his manner, so 
simple his language, so affectionate the glance of his 
pleasant eye ! 

There were, indeed, some whom Coleridge tired, 
and some whom he sent asleep. It would occasion- 
ally so happen, when the abstruser mood was strong 
upon him, and the visiter was narrow and ungenial. 



PREFACE. 



I have seen liim at times when you could not incar- 
nate liim^ — ^when he shook aside your petty questions 
or doubts^ and burst with some impatience through 
the obstacles of common conversation. Then^ escaped 
from the flesh, he would soar upwards into an atmo- 
sphere almost too rare to breathe, but which seemed 
proper to him, and there he would float at ease. Like 
enough, what Coleridge then said, his subtlest listener 
would not understand as a man understands a news- 
paper; but, upon such a listener, there would steal 
an influence, and an impression, and a sympathy; 
there would be a gradual attempering of his body 
and spirit, till his total being vibrated with one 
pulse alone, and thought became merged in con- 
templation : — 

And so, his senses gradually wrapt 
In a half sleep, he 'd dream of better worlds, 
And dreaming hear thee still, O singing lark, 
That sangest like an angel in the clouds ! 

But it would be a great mistake to suppose that the 
general character of Mr. Coleridge^s conversation was 
abstruse or rhapsodical. The contents of the following 
pages may, I think, be taken as pretty strong pre- 
sumptive evidence that his ordinary manner was plain 
and direct enough; and even when, as sometimes 
happened, he seemed to ramble from the road, and to 
lose himself in a wilderness of digressions, the truth 
was, that at that very time he was working out his 
fore-known conclusion through an almost miraculous 
logic, the difficulty of which consisted precisely in the 



PREFACE. 



very fact of its minuteness and universality. He took 
so large a scope^ that^ if lie was interrupted before he 
got to the end^ he appeared to have been talking 
without an object; although^ perhaps^ a few steps 
more would have brought you to a pointy a retrospect 
from which would show you the pertinence of all he 
had been saying. I have heard persons complain 
that they could get no answer to a question from 
Coleridge. The truth is^ he answered^ or meant to 
answer^ so fuUy^ that the querist should have no 
second question to ask. In nine cases out of ten he 
saw the question was short or misdirected ; and knew 
that a mere yes or no answer could not embrace the 
truth — that is^ the whole truth — and mighty very 
probably^ by impHcation,, convey error. Hence that 
exhaustive^ cycHcal mode of discoursing in which he 
fiequently indulged; unfit, indeed, for a dinner- 
table, and too long-breathed for the patience of a 
chance visiter, — but which, to those who knew for 
what they came, was the object of their profoundest 
admiration, as it was the source of their most valuable 
instruction. Mr. Coleridge's affectionate disciples 
learned their lessons of philosophy and criticism from 
his own mouth. He was to them as an old master 
of the Academy or Lyceum. The more time he took, 
the better pleased were such visiters ; for they came 
expressly to listen, and had ample proof how truly he 
had declared, that whatever difficulties he might feel, 
with pen in hand, in the expression of his meaning, 
he never found the smallest liitch or impediment in 



PREFACE. 



the utterance of his most subtle reasonings by word 
of mouth. How many a time and oft have I felt his 
abstrusest thoughts steal rhytlmiically on my sonl, 
when chanted forth by him ! Nay^ how often have I 
fancied I heard rise up in answer to his gentle touchy 
an interpreting music of my own^ as from the passive 
strings of some wind-smitten lyre ! 

Mr. Coleridge^s conversation at all times required 
attention^ because what he said was so individual and 
unexpected. But when he was dealing deeply with a 
question^ the demand upon the intellect of the hearer 
was very great ; not so much for any hardness of lan- 
guage, for his diction was always simple and easy ; 
nor for the abstruseness of the thoughts, for they 
generally explained, or appeared to explain, them- 
selves ; but pre-eminently on account of the seeming 
remoteness of his associations, and the exceeding 
subtlety of his transitional links. Upon this point 
it is very happily, though, according to my observa- 
tion, too generally, remarked, by one whose powers 
and opportunities of judging were so eminent, that 
the obliquity of his testimony in other respects is the 
more unpardonable ; — ^^ Coleridge to many people — 
and often I have heard the complaint — seemed to 
wander; and he seemed then to wander the most, 
when, in fact, his resistance to the wandering instinct 
was greatest, — viz.; when the compass and huge 
circuit, by which his illustrations moved, travelled 
farthest into remote regions, before they began to 
revolve. Long before this coming round commenced. 



PREFACE. 



most people had lost him^ and naturally enough sup- 
posed that he had lost himself. They continued to 
admire the separate beauty of the thoughts, but did 
not see their relations to the dominant theme. * * * * 
However, I can assert, upon my long and intimate 
knowledge of Coleridge^s mind, that logic the most 
severe was as inalienable from his mode of thinking, 
as grammar from his language."'^ * True : his mind 
was a logic-vice; let liim fasten it on the tiniest 
flourish of an error, he never slacked his hold, till he 
had crushed body and tail to dust. He was ahvays 
ratiocinating in his own mind, and therefore some- 
times seemed incoherent to the partial observer. It 
happened to him as to Pindar, who in modern days 
has been called a rambhng rhapsodist, because the 
connections of his parts, though never arbitrary, are 
so fine, that the vulgar reader sees them not at all. 
But they are there nevertheless, and may all be so 
distinctly shown, that no one can doubt their exist- 
ence ; and a Httle study will also prove that the points 
of contact are those which the true genius of lyric 
verse naturally evolved, and that the entire Pindaric 
ode, instead of being the loose and lawless outburst 
wliich so many have fancied, is, without any excep- 
tion, the most artificial and highly-wrought composi- 
tion which Time has spared to us from the wreck of 
the Greek Muse. So I can well remember occasions, 
in wliich, after listening to Mr. Coleridge for several 
dehghtful hours, I have gone away with divers 

* Tait's Mag., Sept. 1834, p. 514. 



PREFACE. 



splendid masses of reasoning in my head^ the separate 
beauty and coherency of which T deeply felt ; but how 
they had produced^ or how they bore upon^ each other, 
I could not then perceive. In such cases I have 
mused sometimes even for days afterwards upon the 
words, till at length, spontaneously as it seemed, 
^^the fire would kindle,^^ and the association, which 
had escaped my utmost efforts of comprehension 
before, flash itself all at once upon my mind with 
the clearness of noon-dav hoiit. 

It may well be imagined that a style of conversation 
so continuous and diffused as that which I have just 
attempted to describe, presented remarkable difficul- 
ties to a mere reporter by memory. It is easy to 
preserve the pithy remark, the brilliant retort, or the 
pointed anecdote; these stick of themselves, and 
their retention requires no effort of mind. But 
where the salient angles are comparatively few, and 
the object of attention is a long-drawn subtle dis- 
coursing, you can never recollect, except by yourself 
thinking the argument over again. In so doing, the 
order and the characteristic expressions will for the 
most part spontaneously arise; and it is scarcely 
credible with what degree of accuracy language may 
thus be preserved, where practice has given some 
dexterity, and long familiarity with the speaker has 
enabled, or almost forced, you to catch the outHnes 
of his manner. Yet with all this, so peculiar were 
the flow and breadth of ]\lr. Coleridge^s conversation, 

that I am very sensible how much those who can 

6 



PREFACE . 



best judge will have to complain of my representa- 
tion of it. The following specimens will, I fear, 
seem too fragmentary, and therefore deficient in one 
of the most distinguisliing properties of that which 
they are designed to represent ; and this is true. 
Yet the reader will in most instances have little diffi- 
culty in understanding the course which the conver- 
sation took, although my recollections of it are 
thrown into separate paragraphs for the sake of 
superior precision. As I never attempted to give 
dialogue — indeed, there was seldom much dialogue 
to give — the great point with me was to condense 
what I could remember on each particular topic into 
intelligible wholes with as little injury to the living 
manner and diction as was possible. With this 
explanation, I must leave it to those who still have 
the tones of ^^that old man eloquent^^ ringing in 
their ears, to say how far I have succeeded in this 
delicate enterprise of stamping his winged words with 
perpetuity. 

In reviewing the contents of the following pages, I 
can clearly see that I have admitted some passages 
which will be pronounced illiberal by those who, in 
the present day, emphatically call themselves liberal 
— the liberal. I allude of course to Mr. Coleridge's 
remarks on the Reform Bill and the Malthusian 
economists. The omission of such passages would 
probably have rendered this publication more generally 
agreeable, and my disposition does not lead me to 
give gratuitous offence to any one. But the opinions 



PREFACE. 



of Mr. Coleridge on tliese subjects^ however imper- 
fectly expressed by me, were deliberately entertained 
by him ; and to have omitted, in so miscellaneous a 
collection as tliis, what he was well kno^vn to have 
said, would have argued in me a disapprobation or a 
fear, which I disclaim. A few words, however, may 
be pertinently employed here in explaining the true 
bearing of Coleridge^s mind on the politics of our 
modern days. He was neither a Whig nor a Tory, 
as those designations are usually understood; well 
enough knowing that, for the most part, liaK-truths 
only are involved in the Parliamentary tenets of one 
party or the other. In the common struggles of a 
session, therefore, he took httle interest ; and as to 
mere personal sympathies, the friend of Prere and of 
Poole, the respected guest of Canning and of Lord 
Lansdowne, could have nothing to choose. But he 
threw the weight of his opinion — and it was con- 
siderable — into the Tory or Conservative scale, for 
these tw^o reasons : — Pirst, generally, because he had 
a deep conviction that the cause of freedom and of 
truth is now seriously menaced by a democratical 
spirit, growing more and more rabid every day, and 
giving no doubtful promise of the tyranny to come ; 
and secondly, in particular, because the national 
Church was to him the ark of the covenant of his 
beloved country, and he saw the Whigs about to 
coalesce wdth those whose avowed principles lead them 
to lay the hand of spohation upon it. Add to these 
two grounds, some rehcs of the indignation wliich 

6 2 



PREFACE. 



the efforts of the Whigs to thwart the generous 
exertions of England in the great Spanish war had 
formerly roused within him ; and all the constituents 
of any active feeling in Mr. Coleridge^s mind upon 
matters of state are^ I believe^ fairly laid before the 
reader. The Eeform question in itself gave him little 
concern^ except as he foresaw the present attack on 
the Church to be the immediate consequence of the 
passing of the Bill ; ^^ for let the form of the House 
of Commons/^ said he^ ^' be what it may^ it will be^ 
for better or for worse^ pretty much what the country 
at large is ; but once invade that truly national and 
essentially popular institution, the Church, and divert 
its funds to the relief or aid of individual charity or 
public taxation — how specious soever that pretext 
may be — and you will never thereafter recover the 
lost means of perpetual cultivation. Give back to 
the Church what the nation originally consecrated to 
its use, and it ought then to be charged with the 
education of tlie people; but half of the original 
revenue has been already taken by force from her, 
or lost to her through desuetude, legal decision, or 
public opinion ; and are those whose very houses and 
parks are part and parcel of what the nation designed 
for the general purposes of the Clergy, to be heard, 
when they argue for making the Church support, out 
of her diminished revenues, institutions, the intended 
means for maintaining which they themselves hold 
under the sanction of legal robbery ?^^ Upon this 
subject Mr. Coleridge did indeed feel very warmly. 



PREFACE. 



and was accustomed to express himself accordingly. 
It weighed upon his mind night and day^ and he 
spoke upon it with an emotion^ which I never saw 
him betray upon any topic of common politics^ how- 
ever decided his opinion might be. In this^ there- 
fore, he was felix ojpportunitate mortis ; non enim 

vidit ; and the just and honest of aU parties 

will heartily admit over his grave, that as his prin- 
ciples and opinions were untainted by any sordid 
interest, so he maintained them in the purest spirit of 
a reflective patriotism, without spleen, or bitterness, 
or breach of social union. 

It would require a rare pen to do justice to the 
constitution of Coleridge^s mind. It was too deep, 
subtle, and peculiar, to be fathomed by a morning 
visiter. Pew persons knew much of it in anything 
below the surface ; scarcely three or four ever got to 
understand it in aU its marvellous completeness. 
Mere personal familiarity with this extraordinary man 
did not put you in possession of him; his pursuits 
and aspirations, though in their mighty range pre- 
senting points of contact and sympathy for aU, 
transcended in their ultimate reach the extremest 
limits of most men^s imaginations. For the last 
thirty years of his life, at least, Coleridge was reaUy 
and truly a pliilosopher of the antique cast. He had 
his esoteric views ; and all his prose works from the 
^'Priend'' to the '^ Church and State'' were little 
more than feelers, pioneers, disciplinants for the last 
and complete exposition of them. Of the art of 



PREFACE. 



making books he knew little^ and cared less ; but had 
he been ds much an adept in it as a modern noveHst^ 
he never could have succeeded in rendering popular 
or even tolerable^ at firsts his attempt to push Locke 
and Paley from their common throne in England. A 
little more working in the trenches might have brought 
him cloger to the walls with less personal damage; 
but it is better for Christian philosophy as it is, 
though the assailant was sacrificed in the bold and 
artless attack. Mr. Coleridge^s prose works had so 
very hmited a sale, that although pubHshed in a 
technical sense, they could scarcely be said to have 
ewer become pudlici Juris . He did not think them 
such himself, with the exception, perhaps, of the 
^^ Aids to Reflection,^"* and generally made a particular 
remark if he met any person who professed or showed 
that he had read the '^ Friend,^^ or any of his other 
books. And I have no doubt that had he lived to 
complete his great work on " Philosophy reconciled 
with Christian Rehgion,^^ he would without scruple 
have used in that work any part or parts of his pre- 
liminary treatises, as their intrinsic fitness required. 
Hence in every one of his prose writings there are 
repetitions, either literal or substantial, of passages to 
be found in some others of those writings ; and there 
are several particular positions and reasonings, which 
he considered of vital importance, re-iterated in the 
'' Friend,'' the '' Literary Life,'' the '' Lay Sermons," 
the ^^Aids to Reflection," and the ^'Church and 
State." He was always deepening and widening the 



PREFACE. 



foimdatiou^ and cared not how often he used the 
same stone. In tliinking passionately of the prin- 
ciple^ he forgot the authorship — and sowed beside 
many waters, if peradventure some chance seedhng 
might take root and bear fruit to the glory of God 
and the spiritualisation of Man. 

His mere reading was immense^ and the quality 
and dii'ection of much of it well considered, almost 
unique in this age of the world. He had gone 
thi'ough most of the Fathers, and, I believe, all the 
Schoolmen of any eminence; whilst his familiarity 
with all the more common departments of literature 
in every language is notorious. The early age at 
which some of these acquisitions were made, and his 
ardent seK-abandonment in the strange pui'suit, might, 
according to a common notion, have seemed adverse 
to increase and maturity of power in after life : yet 
it was not so ; he lost, indeed, for ever the chance of 
being a popular writer ; but Lamb^s insjjirecl chariti/- 
loy of twelve years of age continued to his dying day, 
when sixty-two, the eloquent centre of all companies, 
and the standard of intellectual greatness to hundreds 
of affectionate disciples far and near. Had Coleridge 
been master of liis genius, and not, alas ! mastered 
by it; — had he less romantically fought a single- 
handed fight against the whole prejudices of his age, 
nor so mercilessly racked his fine powers on the 
problem of a universal Christian philosophy, — he 
might have easily won all that- a reading public can 
give to a favouiite, and have left a name — not srreater 



PREFACE. 



nor more enduring indeed — but — better known, and 
more prized, than now it is, amongst the wise, the 
gentle, and the good, throughout all ranks of society. 
Nevertheless, desultory as his labours, fragmentary as 
his productions at present may seem to the cursory 
observer — my undoubting belief is, that in the end it 
will be found that Coleridge did, in his vocation, the 
da/s work of a giant. He has been melted into the 
very heart of the rising literatures of England and 
America; and the principles he has taught are the 
master-light of the moral and intellectual being of 
men, who, if they shall fail to save, will assuredly 
illustrate and condemn, the age in which they live. 
As it is, they bide their time. 

Coleridge himself — blessings on his gentle memory ! 
— Coleridge was a frail mortal. He had indeed his 
peculiar weaknesses as weU as his unique powers; 
sensibilities that an averted look would rack, a heart 
which would have beaten calmly in the tremblings of 
an earthquake. He slu-ank from mere uneasiness 
like a child, and bore the preparatory agonies of liis 
death-attack like a martyr. Sinned against a thou- 
sand times more than sinning, he himself suffered an 
almost life-long punishment for his errors, whilst the 
world at large has the unwithering fruits of his 
labours, his genius, and his sacrifice. Necesse est 
tanqumn immaturam mortem ejus defleam ; si tamen 
fas est aid fiere, aut omnino mortem vocare qua tanti 
viri mortalitas magis finita qiiam vita est. Vivit 
enim, vivetque semper, atqne etiam latins in memoria 



PREFACE. 



homimim et sennone versabitur, postquam ah oculis 
recessit. 



Samuel Taylor Coleridge was the youngest child of 
the Reverend John Coleridge^ Vicar of the Parish of 
Ottery St. Mary, in the county of Devon, and master 
of Henry the Eighth^s Tree Grammar School in that 
town. His mother^s maiden name was Ann Bowdon. 
He was born at Ottery on the 21st of October, 1772, 
^^ about eleven o'clock in the forenoon,^' as his father 
the Yicar has, with rather a curious particularity, 
entered it in the register. 

He died on the 25th of July, 1834, in Mr. 
GiUman's house, in the Grove, Highgate, and is 
buried in the old churchyard, by the road side. 

AI AE TEAI ZnOT2IN AHA0NE2 . 

H. N. C. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

Character of Othello ... 1 

Schiller" s Robbers . . . . 2 

Shakspeare 2 

Scotch Novels . . . . 2 

Lord Byron .... 2 

John Kemble . . . . 2 

Mathews 3 

Parliamentary Privilege . . 4 

Permanency and Progression of 
Nations .... 

Kant's Races of Mankind 

Materialism 

Ghosts 

Character of the Age for Logic 

Plato and Xenophon . 

Greek Drama .... 

Kotzebue .... 

Burke 

St. John's Gospel 

Christianity .... 

Epistle to the Hebrews 
-^he Logos .... 
-Jieason and Understanding 

Kean 

Sir James Mackintosh 

Sir H. Davy .... 

Robert Smith 

Canning 

National Debt 

Poor Laws .... 

Conduct of the Whigs 

Reform of the House of Commons 

Church of Rome . 

Zendavesta 

Pantheism and Idolatry 

Difference between Stories of 
Dreams and Ghosts . 

Phantom Portrait 

Witch of Endor 

Socinianism 

Plato and Xenophon 
JReligions of the Greeks 



Egyptian Antiquities . . 29 

Milton 30 

Virgil 30 

Granville Penn and the Deluge 30 

Rainbow 31 

English and Greek Dancing . 31 
Greek Acoustics . . . .31 
Lord Byron's Versification and 

Don Juan 32 

Parental Control in Mamage . 32 
Marriage of Cousins . . .33 
Differences of Character . . 33 
Blumeubach and Kant's Races . 33 
lapetic and Semitic . . .33 

Hebrew 33 

Solomon 33 

Jewish History . . . . 34 
,^pinozistic and Hebrew Schemes 34 
Roman Catholics . . .35 
Energy of Man and other Ani- 
mals 35 

Shakspeare in minimis . . 35 

Paul Sarpi 36 

Bartram's Travels . . .36 
The Understanding . . . 36 
Parts of Speech . . . .37 

Grammar 38 

Magnetism 38 

Electricity . . . . . 38 

Galvanism 38 

Spenser 39 

Character of Othello . . . 39 

Hamlet 40 

Polonius 40 

Principles and Maxims - . 41 

Love 41 

Measure for Measure . . . 42 
Ben Jonson .... 42 

Beaumont and Fletcher . . 42 

Version of the Bible . . .43 

-..Craniology . . . . . 43 

Spurzheim ... .44 



CONTENTS. 



PAGK 

Bull and Waterland . . . 44 

—The Trinity .... 44 

v-Scale of Animal Being . . . 45 

^Popedom 47 

Scanderbeg 47 

Thomas k Becket . . .47 
Pure Ages of Greek, Italian, 

and English . . . . 47 

Luther 47 

Baxter 47 

Algernon Sidney's Style . . 48 

Ariosto and Tasso . . . 48 
Prose and Poetry . . .48 

The Fathers 48 

flhenferd 48 

•Jacob Behmen . . . . 49 

Non-perception of Colours . . 49 

Restoration 49 

Reformation . . . .50 

William III 50 

Berkeley 50 

Spinosa 50 

Genius 50 

Envy 50 

Love 50 

Jeremy Taylor . . . . 51 

Hooker 51 

Ideas 51 

Knowledge 52 

Painting 52 

Prophecies of the Old Testament 52 

Messiah 53 

Jews 53 

The Trinity . . . .53 

Conversion of the Jews . . 54 
Jews in Poland . . . .55 

Mosaic Miracles . . . . 56 

-^Pantheism 57 

Poetic Promise . . . . 57 

Nominalists and Realists . . 58 

British Schoolmen . . . . 59 

-ftpinosa 59 

-Fall of Man 61 

Madness 61 

Bro^vn and Darwin . . . 62 

Nitrous Oxide .... 62 

Plants 62 

Insects 62 

Men 62 

Dog 62 

Ant and Bee 62 

Black Colonel .... 63 

Holland and the Dutch . . . 63 
Religion gentilises . . .64 

Women and Men . . . . 65 

Biblical Commentators . . 65 

Walkerite Creed . . . , 65 
Home Tooke . . . .65 

Diversions of Purley . . . 65 

Gender of the Sun in German . 66 

Home Tooke .... 68 

Jacobins 68 



PAGE 

-i*ersian and Arabic Poetry . 69 
Milesian Tales . . . .69 
Sir T. Monro . . . . 70 

Sir S. Raffles .... 70 

Canning 70 

Shakspeare 71 

Milton 71 

Homer 71 

-Reason and Understanding . . 72 
Words and Names of Things . 72 

-The Trinity 73 

Irving 73 

Abraham 73 

Isaac 74 

Jacob 74 

Origin of Acts . . . .75 

Love 5 

Lord Eldon's Doctrine as to 

Grammar Schools . . .75 

Democracy 76 

The Eucharist . . . .76 
St. John, xix. 11 . . . . 77 
Divinity of Christ ... 79 
Genuineness of Books of Moses . 79 
Mosaic Prophecies . . . . 79 
Talent and Genius . . .80 
Motives and Impulses . . . 80 
Constitutional and Functional 

Life 80 

Hysteria 81 

Hydro-Carbonic Gas . . .81 
Bitters and Tonics . . . . 81 
Specific Medicines . . .81 
Epistles to the Ephesians and 

Colossians 82 

Oaths 82 

Flogging 83 

Eloquence of Abuse . . .83 
The Americans . . . . 84 
Book of Job .... 84 
Translation of the Psalms . . 85 
Ancient Mariner . . .86 

Undine 88 

Martin 88 

Pilgrim's Progress . . . 88 

Prayer 89 

Church-singing . . . . 90 

Hooker 91 

Dreams 91 

Jeremy Taylor . . . .91 
English Reformation . . . 93 

Catholicity 94 

>Gnosis 94 

TertuUian 94 

St. John 94 

Principles of a Review . . 95 

Party Spirit 96 

Southey's Life of Bunyan . . 96 

Laud 97 

Puritans and Cavaliers . . 97 
Presbyterians, Independents, 

and Bishops ... 97 





CONTENTS. 


xxix 




PAGE 




PAGE 


study of the Bible . 


97 


Patronage of the Fine Arts 


127 


Kabelais .... 


98 


Old Women .... 


127 


Swift 


98 


Pictures .... 


128 


Bentley 


99 


Chillingworth 


131 


Burnet .... 


99 


Superstition of Maltese, Sici- 




Giotto 


99 


lians, and Italians 


132 


Painting .... 


100 


Asgill 


133 


Seneca 


100 


The French 


134 


Plato 


100 


The Good and the True 


135 


Aristotle .... 


101 


Romish Religion 


135 


Duke of ^yellington . 


101 


England and Holland . 


136 


Monied Interest . 


102 


Iron 


136 


Canning .... 


102 


Galvanism .... 


136 


Boun-ienne .... 


102 


Heat 


136 


Jews 


103 


National Colonial Character 




The Papacy and the Eeforaia- 




and Naval Discipline 


137 


tion 


104 


England .... 


139 


LeoX 


105 


Holland and Belgium . 


139 


Thelwall .... 


105 


Greatest Happiness Principle 


141 


Swift 


106 


Hobbism .... 


142 


Stella . 


106 


The Two Modes of Political 




Iniquitous Legislation 


106 


Action .... 


143 


^purzheim and Craniology . 


106 


Truths and Maxims . 


144 


French Revolution, 1830 . 


108 


Drayton and Daniel 


145 


Captain B. Hall and the Ame- 




Mr. Coleridge's System of Phi- 




ricans .... 


108 


losophy .... 


146 


English Eeformation 


109 


Keenness and Subtlety 


148 


Democracy .... 


110 


Duties and Needs of an Advo- 




Idea of a State . 


110 


cate .... 


148 


Church 


110 


Abolition of the French Here- 




Government 


110 


ditary Peerage . 


150 


French Gendarmerie . 


111 


Conduct of Ministers on the 




Philosophy of Young Men at 




Reform Bill . 


151 


the Present Day . 


111 


Religion .... 


153 


Thucydides and Tacitus 


112 


Union with Ireland . 


154 


Poetry .... 


112 


Irish Church 


154 


Modern Metre 


113 


A State .... 


155 


Logic 


113 


Persons and Things 


155 


Yarro 


114 


History .... 


156 


Socrates .... 


114 


Beauty 


156 


-Oreek Philosophy 


114 


Genius .... 


156 


-Plotinus .... 


114 


Church 


157 


Tertullian .... 


115 


State 


157 


Scotch and English Lakes 


115 


Dissenters .... 


157 


Love and Friendship opposed 


116 


Gracefulness of Children . 


158 


Marriage .... 


116 


Dogs 


158 


Characterlessness of AYomen 


116 


Ideal Toiy and Whig 


. 158 


Mental Anarchy 


117 


The Church .... 


. 159 


Ear and Taste for Music dif- 




Ministers and the Refonn Bil 


L 159 


ferent .... 


117 


Disfranchisement 


160 


English Liturgy 


. 117 


Genius Feminine . 


161 


Belgian Revolution 


118 


Pirates .... 


161 


G alileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon 


118 


Astrology .... 


. 161 


The Reformation 


119 


Alchemy .... 


161 


House of Commons 


120 


Reform Bill .... 


162 


Government 


121 


Crisis .... 


. 162 


Earl Grey .... 


122 


John, chap, iii. ver. 4 . 


. 163 


Government 


123 


Dictation and Inspiration 


. 163 


Popular Representation 


124 


.«G-nosis 


165 


Napier .... 


125 


New Testament Canon 


. 165 


Buonaparte .... 


126 


Unitarianism — Moral Philo- 




Southey .... 


126 


sophy 


. 165 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

~^oral Law of Polarity . . 167 
Epidemic Disease . . . , 168 
Quarantine . . . . * 169 

Harmony 170 

Intellectual Revolutions . .170 
Modern Style . . . . 170 
Genius of the Spanish and 

Italians 171 

Vico 171 

-Spinosa 171 

Colours 171 

Destruction of Jerusalem . 172 

Epic Poem 172 

Vox Populi Vox Dei . . 173 

Black 173 

Asgill and Defoe . . .173 
Home Tooke . . . . 174 
Fox and Pitt . . . .174 

Horner 174 

Adiaphori 175 

Citizens and Christians . . 175 
Professor Park . . . .175 
English Constitution . . . 175 
Democracy .... 176 
Milton and Sidney . . . 176 
De Vi Miuimorum . . . 177 

Hahnemann 177 

Luther 177 

Sympathy of old Greek and 

Latin with English . . . 178 
Roman Mind . . . .178 

War 179 

Charm for Cramp . . .179 

Greek 180 

Dual, Neuter plural, and Verb 

singular 180 

Theta 181 

Talented 181 

Homer 182 

Valcknaer 182 

Principles and Facts . . . 182 

Schmidt 183 

Puritans and Jacobins . . . 184 
Wordsworth . . . .184 
French Revolution . . . 186 
Infant Schools . . . .187 
Mr. Coleridge's Philosophy . . 188 

Sublimity 188 

Solomon 188 

Madness 189 

C.Lamb 189 

Faith and Belief . . .189 

Dobrizhoffer 190 

Scotch and English . . . 191 
Criterion of Genius . . . 192 
Dryden and Pope . . .192 
Milton's Disregard of Painting 192 
Baptismal Service . . . 193 
Jews' Division of the Scripture 193 

Sanskrit 194 

Hesiod 194 

Virgil 194 



FAGB 

Genius Metaphysical . . , 194 

Don Quixote .... 194 

Steinmetz, 195 

Keats 195 

Christ's Hospital . . . . 196 

Bowyer 196 

St. Paul's Melita . . . . 197 
English and German . . 198 
Best State of Society . . . 199 
Great Minds Androgynous . 199 
Philosopher's Ordinary Lan- 
guage 199 

Juries 200 

Barristers' and Physicians' 

Fees 200 

Quacks 20O 

Caesarean Operation . . . 200 

Inherited Disease . . . 200 

Mason's Poetry .... 201 
Northern and Southern States 

of the American Union . . 201 
All and the Whole . . .202 

Ninth Article . . . . 202 
Sin and Sins . . . .202 

Old Divines 203 

Preaching extempore . . 203 

Church of England . . . 204 

Union with Ireland . . . 204 

Faust 206 

Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, 

and Wordsworth . . . 207 

Beaumont and Fletcher . . 212 

Ben Jonson .... 213 

Massinger 213 

House of Commons appointing 
the Officers of the Army and 

Navy 214 

Penal Code in Ireland . . . 215 

Churchmen .... 215 

Coronation Oaths . . . . 216 

Divinity 217 

Professions and Trades . . 217 

Modem Political Economy . 217 

National Debt . . . . 219 

Property Tax .... 220 

Duty of Landholders . . . 220 

Massinger 221 

Shakspeare 223 

Hieronimo . . . .223 

Love's Labour Lost . . . 224 

Gifford's Massinger . . . 226 

Shakspeare 226 

The Old Dramatists . . 226 

Statesmen 227 

Burke 227 

Prospect of Monarchy or De- 
mocracy 228 

The Reformed House of Com- 
mons 228 

United States of America . . 229 

Captain B. Hall . . . 229 

Northern and Southern States . 230 



CONTENTS.. 



FACE 

Democracy with Slavery . . 230 

Quakers 231 

Land and Money . . . . 231 
Methods of Investigation . . 232 
Church of Rome . . . . 235 
Celibacy of the Clergy . . 235 
Roman Conquest of Italy . 236 
Wedded Love in Shakspeare 
and his Contemporary Dra- 
matists 236 

Tennyson's Poems . . . 236 

Rabelais and Luther . . 237 
Wit and Madness . . .237 

Colonization 238 

Machinery . . . .238 

Capital 238 

Roman Conquest . . . 239 

Constantine 239 

Papacy and the Schoolmen . 239 
Civil \Var of the Seventeenth 

Century 240 

Hampden's Speech . . . 241 

Reformed House of Commons . 241 

Food 242 

Medicine 242 

Poison 242 

Obstruction . . . .243 

Wilson 243 

Shakspeare's Sonnets . . 245 

Love 246 

Wicliffe 246 

Luther 246 

Reverence for Ideal Truths . 246 
Johnson the Whig . . .247 

Asgill 248 

James 1 248 

Sir P. Sidney . . . . 249 

Things are Finding their Level 249 

German 249 

Goethe 249 

God's Providence . . . 250 
Man's Freedom . . . . 250 
Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro . 250 
Working to better one's Con- 
dition 250 

Negro Emancipation . . . 251 
Fox and Pitt . . . .251 

Revolution 252 

Virtue and Liberty . . . 252 

Epistle to the Romans . . . 252 

Erasmus 253 

Luther 253 

Negro Emancipation . . 253 
Hacket's Life of Archbishop 

Williams 254 

Charles 1 254 

Manners under Edward ITL, 

Richard IL, and Henry VIII. 254 

, Hypothesis 255 

Suffiction 255 

Theory 255 

^Lyell's Geology . . . 256 



TAGK 

Gothic Architecture . . . 256 
Gerard Douw's " Schoolmas- 
ter " and Titian's " Venus " . 257 
Sir J. Scarlett . . . .257 
Mandeville's Fable of the Bees 258 
Bestial Theory . . . . 258 
Character of Bertram . .259 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Dra- 
mas 259 

^Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides 260 

Milton 262 

Stvle 263 

Cavalier Slang . . . .263 

Junius 264 

Prose and Verse . . . 264 

Imitation and Copy . . . 265 
Dr. Johnson . . . .265 

Boswell 265 

Burke 265 

Newton 266 

Milton 266 

Painting . . . . . 266 

Music 267 

Poetry 268 

Public Schools . . . .268 

Scott and Coleridge . . . 269 

Nervous Weakness . . . 270 

Hooker and Bull . . . . 270 

Faith 270 

Quakers 271 

Philanthropists . . . .271 

Jews 271 

Sallust 272 

Thucydides 272 

Herodotus 272 

Gibbon 273 

Key to the Decline of the 

Roman Empire . . . 274 
Dr. Johnson's Political Pam- 
phlets 274 

Taxation 274 

Direct Representation . . . 275 

Universal Suffrage . . . 275 
Right of Women to Vote . .275 
Home Tooke . . . .276 

Etymology of the final Ive . . 276 
"The Lord" in the English 

Version of the Psalms, &c. . 277 

Scotch Kirk and Irving . . 278 

Milton's Egotism . . . . 278 

Claudian 279 

Sterne 279 

Humour and Genius . . 280 
Great Poets good Men . . . 281 
Diction of the Old and New- 
Testament Version . . 281 

Hebrew 281 

Vowels and Consonants . . 282 

Greek Accent and Quantity . 282 

Consolation in Distress . . 284 

Mock Evangelicals . . . 285 

Autumn Day . . . 285 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

^Jlosetti on Dante . . . . 285 
Laughter : Farce and Tragedy 285 
Baron Von Humboldt . . 286 
Modern Diplomatists . . . 286 
Man cannot be stationary . 288 
Fatalism and Providence . . 288 
Characteristic Temperament of 

Nations .... 289 

Greek Particles . . . . 289 
Latin Compounds . . . 290 

Propertius 290 

Tibullus 290 

Lucan 290 

Statius 290 

Valerius Flaccus . . . . 290 

-Claudian 290 

Persius 291 

Prudentius . . . .291 
Hermesianax . . . . 291 
Destruction of Jerusalem . . 291 

Epic Poem 292 

Paradise Lost .... 292 
German and English . , . 293 
Modern Travels ... 293 

The Trinity 293 

Incarnation .... 293 

-Redemption 293 

Education . ... 294 

Elegy . .... 294 

Lavacrum Pallados . . . 294 
Greek and Latin Pentameter . 295 
Milton's Latin Poems . . . 295 
Poetical Filter . . . .295 
Gray and Cotton . . . . 296 
Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare 297 

Dryden 297 

Dr. Johnson 297 

Scott's Novels . . . .298 
Scope of Christianity . . . 298 
Times of Charles I. . . .298 
Messenger of the Covenant . . 299 
Prophecy 299 

—Logic of Ideas and of Syllo- 
gisms 300 

W. S. Landor's Poetry . . 300 

Beauty 300 

Chronological Arrangement of 

Works 301 

Toleration 301 

Norwegians .... 303 
Articles of Faith . . . . 304 
Modem Quakerism . . . 305 
Devotional Spirit . . . . 305 
Sectarianism .... 307 

Origen 307 

Some Men like Musical Glasses 307 
Sublime and Nonsense . 307 



PAGB 

Atheist 307 

Proof of Existence of God . 307 
Kant's Attempt . . . . 308 
Plurality of Worlds . . .308 

A Reasoner 308 

Shakspeare' s Intellectual Ac- 
tion 309 

Crabbe and Southey . . . 309 
Peter Simple and Tom Crin- 
gle's Log . . . .309 

Chaucer 310 

Shakspeare .... 311 

Ben Jonson 311 

Daniel 311 

Beaumont and Fletcher . . 312 

Massinger 312 

Lord Byron and H. Walpole's 

" Mysterious Mother " . . 313 
Lewis's Jamaica Journal . 313 

Sicily 314 

Malta 315 

Sir Alexander Ball . . . 315 
Cambridge Petition to admit 
Dissenters .... 316 

Com Laws 317 

Christian Sabbath . . .318 
High Prizes and Revenues of 

the Church . . . . 320 
Sir Charles Wetherell's Speech 322 
National Church . . . 322 

Dissenters 322 

Papacy 322 

Universities 323 

Schiller's Versification . . 323 
German Blank Verse . . . 323 
Roman Catholic Emancipation 323 
Duke of Wellington . . 324 

Coronation Oath . . . . 324 
Corn Laws . . . .324 

Modern Political Economy . . 325 
^^ocinianism .... 326 
-Unitarianisra . . . . 327 
Fancy and Imagination . . 327 
Mr. Coleridge's System . . 329 
Biographia Literaria . . 330 

Dissenters 330 

Lord Brooke .... 331 
Barrow and Drvden . . . 331 
Peter Wilkins and Stothard . 331 
Fielding and Richardson . . 332 
Bishop Sandford . . . 332 
Roman Catholic Religion . . 332 
Euthanasia .... 333 
Recollections by Mr. Justice 

Coleridge 334 

Address to a Godchild 42 



TABLE-TALK. 



December 29, 1822. 

Character of Othello. — Schiller^s Hohhers. — ShaTcspeare. — Scotch 
Novels, — Lord Byron. — John Kemhle. — Mathews. 

OTHELLO must not be conceived as a negro^ but 
a high and cliivalrous Moorish chief. Shakspeare 
learned the spirit of the character from the Spanish 
poetry^ which was prevalent in England in his time.^^ 
Jealousy does not strike me as the point in his pas- 
sion ; I take it to be rather an agony that the creature, 
whom he had believed angelic^ with whom he had 
garnered up his hearty and whom he could not help 
still loving^ should be proved impure and worthless. 
It was the struggle not to love her. It was a moral 
indignation and regret that virtue should so fall : — 
'' But yet tliepit^ of it^ lago ! — lago ! the j»% of 
it, lago!^^ In addition to tliis, his honour was 
concerned: lago would not have succeeded but by 
hinting that his honour was compromised. There is 
no ferocity in Othello ; his mind is majestic and com- 
posed. He deUberately determines to die ; and speaks 

* Caballeros Granadinos, 
Aunque Moros, hijos d'algo. — Ed. 



2 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

his last speech, with a view of showing his attachment 
to the Yenetian state^ though it had superseded him. 
Schiller has the material Sublime;* to produce an 
effect^ he sets you a whole town on fire^ and throws 
infants with their mothers into the flames, or locks up 
a father in an old tower. But Shakspeare drops a 
handkerchief, and the same or greater effects follow. 

Lear is the m§st tremendous effort of Shakspeare 
as a poet ; Hamlet as a philosopher or meditater ; and 
Othello is the union of the two. There is something 
gigantic and unformed in the former two ; but in the 
latter, everything assumes its due place and propor- 
tion, and the whole mature powers of his mind are 
displayed in admirable equilibrium. 

I tliink Old Mortality and Guy Mannering the best 
of the Scotch novels. 

It seems, to my ear, that there is a sad want of 
harmony in Lord Byron'^s verses. Is it not unnatural 
to be always connecting very gTeat intellectual power 
with utter depravity ? Does such a combination often 
really exist m rerum naturd? 

I always had a great Hking — I may say, a sort of 
nondescript reverence — for John Kemble. What a 
quaint creature he was ! I remember a party, in 
which he was discoursing in his measured manner 
after dinner, when the servant announced his carriage. 
He nodded, and went on. The announcement took 

* This expression — "material Sublime" — like a hundred others -which 
have slipped into general use, came originally from Mr. Coleridge, and was 
hy him, in the first instance, applied to Schiller's Robbers. — See Act iv., 
sc. 5. — Ed. 



JOHN KEMBLE. ANECDOTE. 3 

place thrice afterwards; Kemble eacli time nodding 
liis head a little more impatiently^ but still going on. 
At last^ and for the fourth time^ the servant entered, 
and said, — ^^ ]\Irs. Kemble says, sir, she has the 
rheumatitj^, and cannot stay/^ '^ Add is??i !^' di'opped 
John, in a parenthesis, and proceeded quietly in his 
harangue. 

Kemble would correct any body, at any time, and 
in any place. Dear Charles Mathews — a true genius 
in his hue, in my judgment — told me he was once 
performing privately before the King. The King was 
much pleased with the imitation of Kemble, and said, 
" I liked Kemble very much. He was one of my 
earliest friends. I remember once he was talking, 
and found liimseK out of snuff. I offered him my 
box. He declined taking any — ^ he, a poor actor, 
could not put his fingers into a royal box."' I said, 
^ Take some, pray; you will obWge me."' Upon 
which Kemble replied, ^ It would become your royal 
mouth better to say, obh'ge me;^ and took a pinch." 

It is not easy to put me out of countenance, or 
interrupt the feehng of the time by mere external 
noise or chcumstance; yet once I was thoroughly 
do'iie u](\y as you would say. I was reciting, at a par- 
ticular house, the ^^ Eemorse f and was in the midst 
of Alhadra's description^ of the death of her husband, 

* Alhadea. TMs night your cMeftain arm'd himself, 
And hurried from me. But I followed hiTn 
At distance, till I sa-w him enter there! 
NAOin. The cavern ? 

Alhadea. Yes, the mouth of yonder cavern. 
After a while I saw the son of Valdez 
Rush by with flaring torch : he likewise enter d. 
There was another and a longer pause ; 
And once, methought, I heard the clash of swords ! 

B 2 



4 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

when a scrubby boy, with, a shining face set in dirt, 
burst open the door and cried out, ^^ Please, ma^am, 
master says. Will you ha^, or will you not ha^, the 
pin-round ?^^ 

January 1, 1823. 

Parliamentary Privilege. — Permanency and Progression of Nations, 
— KanCs Races of Mankind. 

PEIVILEGE is a substitution for Law, where, from 
the nature of the circumstances, a law cannot act 

And soon the son of Yaldez re-appear'd : 
He flung his torch towards the moon in sport, 
And seem'd as he were mirthful ! I stood listening, 
Impatient for the footsteps of my husband. 

Naomi. Thou calledst him ? 

Alhadra. I crept into the cavern — 
'Twas dark and very silent. What saidst thou ? 
No ! No ! I did not dare call Isidore, 
Lest I should hear no answer ! A hrief while, 
Belike, I lost all thought and memory 
Of that for which I came ! After that pause, 

Heaven ! I heard a groan, and foilow'd it; 
And yet another groan, which guided me 
Into a strange recess — and there was light, 

A hideous light ! his torch lay on the ground ; 
Its flame burnt dimly o'er a chasm's brink : 

1 spake ; and whilst I spake, a feeble groan 

Came from that chasm ! it was his last — his death-groan I 

Naomi. Comfort her, Allah ! 

Alhadra. I stood in unimaginable trance 
And agony that cannot be remember'd, 
Listening with hoiTid hope to hear a groan ! 
But I had heard his last; — my husband's death-groan I 

Naomi. Haste ! let us onward ! 

Alhadra. I look'd far down the pit — 
My sight was bounded by a jutting fragment; 
And it was stain'd with blood. Then first I shriek'd; 
My eyeballs burnt, my brain grew hot as fire, 
And all the hanging drops of the wet roof 
Tum'd into blood — I saw them turn to blood ! 
And I was leaping wildly down the chasm, 
When on the further brink I saw his sword, 
And it said, Vengeance '.—Curses on my tongue ! 
The moon hath moved in heaven, and I am here, 
And he hath not had vengeance ! — Isidore I 
Spirit of Isidore, thy murderer lives ! 
Away, away!" — Act iv., sc. 3. 



PARLIAMENTARY PRIVILEGE. 



without clasliing with greater and more general prin- 
ciples. The House of Commons must, of course, have 
the power of taking cognizance of offences against its 
own rights. Sir Francis Burdett might have heen 
properly sent to the Tower for the speech he made 
in the House ; * but when afterwards he published it 
in Cobbett, and they took cognizance of it as a breach 
of privilege, they violated the plain distinction between 
privilege and law. As a speech in the House, the 
House could alone animadvert upon it, consistently 
with the effective preservation of its most necessary 
prerogative of freedom of debate; but when that 
speech became a book, then the law was to look to it ; 
and there being a law of libel, commensurate with 
every possible object of attack in the state, privilege, 
wliicli acts, or ought to act, only as a substitute for 
other laws, could have nothing to do with it. I have 
heard that one distinguished individual said, " That 
he, for one, would not shrink from affirming, that if 
the House of Commons chose to burn one of their own 
members in Palace Yard, it had an inlierent power 
and right by the constitution to do so.^^ Tliis was 
said, if at all, by a moderate-minded man ; and may 
show to what atrocious tjTanny some persons may 
advance in theory, under shadow of this word privilege. 

* March 12, 1810. Sir Francis Burdett made a motion in the House of 
Commons for the discharge of Mr. Gale Jones, who had been committed to 
Newgate by a resolution of the House on the 21st of Fehruaiy preceding. 
Sir Francis afterwards published, in Cobbett's Political Register, of the 24th 
of the same month of March, a " Letter to his Constituents, denying the 
power of the House of Commons to imprison the people of England, and he 
accompanied the letter with an argument in support of his position. On the 
27th of March a complaint of breach of privilege, founded on this publication, 
was made in the House by Mr. (now Sir Thomas) Lethbridge, and after 
several long debates, a motion that Sir Francis Burdett should be committed 
to the Tower was made on the 5th of April, 1810, by Sir Robert Salisbury, . 
and carried by a majority of 38.— Ed. . / 



6 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

There are two principles in every European and 
Christian state : Permanency and Progression.* In 
the civil wars of the seventeenth centnry in England, 
which are as new and fresh now as they were a hun- 
dred and sixty years ago, and will be so for ever to 
us, these two principles came to a struggle. It was 
natural that the great and the good of the nation 
should be found in the ranks of either side. In the 
Mohammedan states, there is no principle of perma- 
nence: and, therefore, they sink directly. They 
existed, and could only exist, in their efforts at pro- 
gression ; when they ceased to conquer, they fell in 
pieces. Turkey would long since have fallen, had it 
not been supported by the rival and conflicting in- 
terests of Cliristian Europe. The Turks have no 
church; religion and state are one; hence there is 
no counterpoise, no mutual support. This is the very 
essence of their Unitarianism. They have no past ; 
they are not an historical people ; they exist only in 
the present. China is an instance of a permanency 
without progression. The Persians are a superior 

* See this position stated and illustrated in detail in Mr. Coleridge's work 
" On the Constitution of the Church and State, according to the Idea of each " 
p. 21, 2nd edit., 1830. Well acquainted as I am with the fact of the compara- 
tively small acceptation which Mr. Coleridge's prose works have ever found 
in the literary world, and with the reasons, and. what is more, with the 
causes of it, I still wonder that this particular treatise has not heen more 
noticed : first, because it is a little hook ; secondly, because it is, or at least 
nineteen-twentieths of it are, written in a popular style ; and thirdly, because 
it is the only work, that I know or have ever heard mentioned, that even 
attempts a solution of the difficulty in which an ingenious enemy of the 
Church of England may easily involve most of its modern defenders in Par- 
liament, or through the press, upon their own principles and admissions. 
Mr. Coleridge himself prized this little work highly, although he admitted 
its incompleteness as a composition : — " But I don't care a rush about it," he 
said to me, " as an author. The saving distinctions are plainly stated in it, 
and I am sure nothing is wanted to make them tell, but that some kind friend 
should steal them from their obscure hiding-place, and just tumble them down 
before the public as his ownV — Ed. 



KANT. :\rATEIlIALISM. 



race : they have a liistory and a literature ; they were 
always considered by the Greeks as quite distinct from 
the other barbarians. The Afghans are a remarkable 
people. They have a sort of repubhc. Europeans 
and Orientalists may be well represented by two 
figures standing back to back : the latter looking to 
the east^ that is^ backwards ; the former looking west- 
ward, or forwards. 

Kant assigns three great races of mankind. If two 
individuals of distinct races cross^ a thii'd^, or tertium 
aliqidd, is invarially produced^ different from either^ 
as a white and a negro produce a mulatto. But when 
different varieties of the same race cross^ the offspring 
is according to what we call chance ; it is now like 
one^ now like the other parent. K'ote this^ when you 
see the children of any couple of distinct European 
complexions, — as Enghsh and Spanish, German and 
Itahan, Eussian and Portuguese^ and so on. 



January 3, 1823. 
Materialism. — Ghosts, 

T7ITECEE we have an immortal soul^ or we have 
-*-^ not. If we have not, we are beasts ; the first 
and wisest of beasts, it may be ; but stiE. true beasts.* 
"We shaU. only differ in degree^ and not ia kind; just 

as the elephant differs fr^om the slug. But by the 
concession of all the materiahsts of all the schools, 

* " Try to conceive a man -vTitliout the ideas of God, eternity-, freedom, -^ill, 
absolute truth ; of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal 
endo-vred -with a memory of appearances and facts might remain. But the 
Tnan will have vanished, and you have instead a creature more subtle than 
any beast of the field, but likewise cursed above every beast of the field ; 
upon the belly must it go, and dust must it eat all the days of its life."— 
Church and State, p. 54, n. 



8 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

or almost all^ we are not of the same kind as beasts 
— and this also we say from our own consciousness. 
Therefore^ methinks^ it must be the possession of a 
soul within us that makes the difference. 



Read the first chapter of Genesis mthout preju- 
dice, and you will be convinced at once. After the 
narrative of the creation of the earth and brute 
animals, Moses seems to pause, and says : — ^^ And 
God said. Let us make man in our image, after our 
likeness!^ And in the next chapter, he repeats the 
narrative : — ^^ And the Lord God formed man of the 
dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils 
the breath of hfe /^ and then he adds these words, — 
^^ and man hecame a living soul^ Materialism will 
never explain those last words. 



Define a vidgar ghost with reference to all that is 
called ghost-like. It is visibility without tangibility; 
which is also the definition of a shadow. Therefore, 
a vulgar ghost and a shadow would be the same ; be- 
cause two different tilings cannot properly have the 
same definition. A visible substance without suscep- 
tibility of impact, I maintain to be an absurdity. 
Unless there be an external substance, the bodily eye 
cannot see it ; therefore, in all such cases, that wliich 
is supposed to be seen is, in fact, not seen, but is an 
image of the brain. External objects naturally pro- 
duce sensation; but here, in truth, sensation produces, 
as it were, the external object. 

In certain states of the nerves, however, I do 
believe that the eye, although not consciously so 
directed, may, by a slight convulsion, see a portion of 



CHARACTER OF THE AGE FOR LOGIC. 9 

the body^ as if opposite to it. The part actually seen 
\\t11 by common association seem the whole ; and the 
whole body wiR then constitute an external object^ 
wliich exj)lains many stories of persons seeing them- 
selves l}ing dead. Bishop Berkeley once experienced 
this. He had the presence of mind to ring the bell^ 
and feel liis pulse ; keeping his eye still fixed on his 
own figTire right opposite to him. He was in a liigh 
fever^ and the brain image died away as the door 
opened. I observed something very like it once at 
Grasmere ; and was so conscious of the cause,, that I 
told a person what I was experiencing^ whilst the 
image still remained. 

Of course, if the vulgar ghost be really a shadow, 
there must be some substance of wliich it is the 
shadow. These visible and intangible shadows, with- 
out substances to cause them, are absurd. 



January 4, 1823. 

Character of the age for Logic. — Plato and Xenophon. — Greek 
Draraa. — Kotzehue. — Burhe. — Plagiarists. 

THIS is not a logical age. A friend lately gave me 
some political pamphlets of the times of Charles I. 
and the Cromwellate. In them the premisses are fre- 
quently wrong, but the deductions are ahnost always 
legitimate; whereas, in the writings of the present 
day, the premisses are commonly sound, but the con- 
, elusions false. I think a great deal of coiamendation 
is due to the University of Oxford for preserving the 
study of logic in the schools. It is a great mistake 
to suppose geometry any substitute for it. 



Negatively, there may be more of the philosophy 



10 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of Socrates in the Memorabilia of Xenophon than in 
Plato : that is^ there is less of what does not belong 
to Socrates ; but the general spirit of, and impression 
left by^ Plato^ are more Socratic* 

In ^schylns religion appears terrible^ malignant, 
and persecuting: Sophocles is the mildest of the 
three tragedians, but the persecuting aspect is still 
maintained : Euripides is like a modern Trenchman, 
never so happy as when giving a slap at the gods 
altos-ether. 



^^^ 



Kotzebue represents the petty kings of the islands 
in the Pacific Ocean exactly as so many Homeric 
chiefs. Eiches command universal influence, and aU 
the kings are supposed to be descended from the gods. 



I confess 1 doubt the Homeric genuineness of 
haKpvoev yeAacjao-a.t It sounds to me much more 
like a prettiness of Bion or Moschus. 



The very greatest writers write best when calm, 
and exerting themselves upon subjects unconnected 
with party. Bui'ke rarely shows all his powers, unless 
where he is in a passion. The Prench Eevolution 

* See p. 26. Mr. Coleridge meant in both these passages, that Xenophon 
had preserved the most of the man Socrates ; that he was the best Boswell ; 
and that Socrates, as a persona dialogi, was little more than a poetical phantom 
in Plato's hands. On the other hand, he says, that Plato is more Socratic, 
that is, more of a philosopher in the Socratic mode of reasoning (Cicero calls 
the Platonic writings generally, Socratici libri) ; and IMr. C. also says, that in 
the metaphysical disquisitions Plato is Pythagorean, meaning, that he worked 
on the supposed ideal or transcendental principles of the extraordinary 
founder of the Italian school. 

JTflttS' SOV • Vi y OCOCt fX.IV XY^Ojhii "hi^CCTO XOKfTCO, 

dccx^DOiv yiKoe,<roc(roc. — Iliad. Z. vi. 452. 



PLAGIARISTS. ST. JOHN^S GOSPEL. 11 

was alone a subject fit for him. We are not yet 
aware of all the consequences of that event. We are 
too near it. 

Goldsmith did everything happily. 



You abuse snufi^ ! Perhaps it is the final cause of 
the human nose. 

A rogue is a roundabout fool ; a fool in circumbe7i» 
dihus. 

Ofnne ignotum jpro magnifico, A dunghill at a 
distance sometimes smells like musk^ and a dead dog 
like elder-flowers. 

Plagiarists are always suspicious of being stolen 
from^ — as pickpockets are observed commonly to 
walk with their hands in their breeches^ j)ockets. 



January 6, 1823. 

St John^s Gospel. — Oliristianity. — Epistle to the Hebrews. — 
The Logos. — Reason and Understanding. 

ST. JOHjN' had a two-fold object in his Gospel and 
his Epistles_,^to prove the divinity,, and also the 
actual human nature and bodily sufferings of Jesus 
Christy — that he was God and Man. The notion 
that the effusion of blood and water from the Saviour^s 
side was intended to prove the real death of the suf- 
ferer originated^ I believe^ with some modern Germans, 
and seems to me ridiculous : there is, indeed, a very 
small quantity of water occasionally in the prsecordia : 
but in the pleura, where wounds are not generally 
mortal, there is a great deal. St. John did not mean, 
I apprehend, to insinuate that the spear-thrust made 



1^ COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

the death, merely as sucli^ certain or evident^ but tliat 
the effusion showed the human nature. ^^ I saw it/^ 
he would say^ ^^ with my own eyes. It was real bloody 
composed of lymph and crassamentum,, and not a 
mere celestial ichor^ as the Phantasmists allege."^^ 



I think the verse of the three witnesses (1 John^ 
V. 7) spurious^ not only because the balance of ex- 
ternal authority is against it^ as Porson seems to have 
shown ; but also^ because^ in my w^ay of looking at 
it^ it spoils the reasoning. 



St. John^s logic is Oriental^ and consists cliiefly in 
position and parallel ; whilst St. Paul displays all the 
intricacies of the Greek svstem. 



Whatever may be thought of the genuineness or 
authority of any part of the book of Daniel, it makes 
no difference in my belief in Christianity ; for CMs- 
tianity is within a man, even as he is a being gifted 
with reason; it is associated with your mother^s 
chair, and with the first-remembered tones of her 
blessed voice. 

I do not believe St. Paul to be the author of the 
Epistle to the Hebrews. Luther^s conjecture is very 
probable, that it was by ApoUos, an Alexandrian Jew. 
The plan is too studiously regular for St. Paul. It 
was evidently written during the yet existing glories 
of the Temple. Por three hundred years the church 
did not affix St. Paulas name to it ; but its apostolical 
or catholic character, independently of its genuineness 
as to St. Paul, was never much doubted. 



CHRISTIANITY. THE LOGOS. 13 

The first tln-ee Gospels show the liistory^ that is, 
the fulfihnent of the prophecies in the facts. St. John 
declares explicitly the doctrine^ oracularly,, and with- 
out comment^ because^ being pure reason, it can only 
be* proved by itself. For Clmstianity proves itself, 
as the sun is seen by its own light. Its evidence is 
involved in its existence. St. Paul writes more par- 
ticularly for the dialectic understanding ; and proves 
those doctrines, which were capable of such proof, by 
common logic. 

St. Jolin used the term 6 Aoyos teclmically. Philo- 
Judseus had so used it several years before the 
probable date of the composition of tliis Gospel ; and 
it was commonly understood amongst the Jewish 
Rabbis at that time, and afterwards, of the manifested 
God. 

Our translators, unfortunately, as I tliink, render 
the clause irpos rov 0eoz/,^ ^^ with God ; '^ that would 
be right, if the Greek were avv rw ©eo). By the 
preposition irpos in tliis place, is meant the utmost 
possible j9f<9^mzVy, without confusion; likeness, with- 
out sameness. The Je^vish Church understood the 
Messiah to be a di^dne person. Philo expressly 
cautions against any one supposing the Logos to be 
a mere personification, or symbol. He says, the 
Logos is a substantial, seK-existent Being. The 
Gnostics, as they were afterwards called, were a kind 
of Arians ; and thought the Logos was an after-birth. 
They placed "^A^vcrcros and Styr) (the Abyss and 
Silence) before him. Therefore it was that St. John 

* John, ch. i., v. 1. 2. 



14 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

said, with emphasis, ev apxfi riv 6 Aoyos — "In the 
beginning was the Word/^ He was begotten in the iBrst 
simultaneous burst of Godhead, if such an expression 
may be pardoned, in speaking of eternal existence. 



The Understanding suggests the materials of rea- 
soning : the Eeason decides upon them. The first 
can only say, — ^This is, or ought to be so. The last 
says, — It must be so.* 



April 27, 1823. 

Kean, — Sir James MachintosJi. — Sh' H. Davy. — Robert Smith. — 
Canning. — National Debt. — Poor Laws, 

KE AN is original ; but he copies from himself. His 
rapid descents from the hyper-tragic to the infra- 
coUoquial, though sometimes productive of great 
effect, are often unreasonable. To see him act, is like 
reading Shakspeare by flashes of hghtning. I do not 
tliink him thorough-bred gentleman enough to play 
OtheUo. 

Sir James Mackintosh is the king of the men of 
talent. He is a most elegant converser. How well I 
remember his giving breakfast to me and Sir Humphry 
Davy, at that time an unknown young man, and our 
having a very spirited talk about Locke and Newton, 
and so forth ! When Davy was gone. Mackintosh 
said to me, " That ^s a very extraordinary young man ; 

* I have preserved this, and several other equivalent remarks, out of a 
dutiful wish to popularize, hy all the honest means in my power, this funda- 
mental distinction ; a thorough mastery of which Mr. Coleridge considered 
necessary to any sound system of psychology ; and in the denial or neglect of 
which he delighted to point out the source of most of the vulgar errors in 
philosophy and religion. The distinction itself is implied throughout almost 
all Mr, C.'s works, whether in verse or prose ; hut it may he found minutely 
argued in the " Aids to Reflection," p. 206, &c., 2nd edit., 1831.— Ed. 



CANNING. NATIONAL DEBT. 15 

but lie is gone wrong on some points.^^ But Davy 
was, at that time at least, a man of genius; and I 
doubt if Mackintosh ever heartily appreciated an emi- 
nently original man. He is uncommonly powerful in 
lus own Kne ; but it is not the hne of a first-rate man. 
After all his fluency and brilliant erudition, you can 
rarely carry off any tiling worth preserving. Y ou might 
not improperly write on liis forehead, ^^ Warehouse to 
let ! '^ He always dealt too much in generahties for 
a lawyer. He is deficient in power in applying his 
principles to the points in debate. I remember Eobert 
Smith had much more logical ability; but Smith 
aimed at conquest by any gladiatorial shift ; whereas 
Mackintosh was uniformly candid in argument. I am 
speaking now from old recollections.* 



Canning is very irritable, surprisingly so for a wit 
who is always giving such hard knocks. He should 
have put on an ass^s skin before he went into parlia- 
ment. Lord Liverpool is the single stay of this 
ministry ; but he is not a man of a directing mind. 
He cannot ride on the wliirlwind. He serves as the 
isthmus to connect one haH of the cabinet with the 
other. He always gives you the common sense of the 
matter, and in that it is that his strength in debate lies, 

* These remarks on the intellectual character of Sir James Mackinto3h, 
by his intimate friend, Robert Hall, the celebrated Baptist Minister, are 
given in his " Life," by his Son. 

" I knoTT no man equal to Sir James in talents. The powers of his mind 
are admirably balanced. He is defective only in ima^nation. He has 
imagination, too — but vtith him imagination is an acquisition rather than a 
faculty. He has, however, plenty of embellishment at command, for his 
memory retains everything. His mind is a spacious repository, hung round 
with beautiful images ; and when he wants one, he has nothing to do but 
reach up his hand to a peg and take it down. But his images were not 
manufactured in his mind; they were imported." — Gregory's Memoirs, S. C. 



16 COLERIDGITS TABLE TALK. 

The National Debt has^ in fact, made more men 
rich, than have a right to be so, or, rather, any ultimate 
power, in case of a struggle, of actualizing their riches. 
It is, in effect, like an ordinary, where three hundred 
tickets have been distributed, but where there is, in 
truth, room only for one hundred. So long as you 
can amuse the company with anytliing else, or make 
them come in successively, all is well, and the whole 
three hundred fancy themselves sure of a dinner ; but 
if any suspicion of a hoax should arise, and they were 
all to rush into the room at once, there would be two 
hundred without a potato for their money ; and the 
table would be occupied by the landholders, who live 
on the spot. 

Poor-laws are the inevitable accompaniments of an 
extensive commerce and a manufacturing system. In 
Scotland, they did without them, till Glasgow and 
Paisley became great manufacturing places, and then 
people said, ^^ We must subscribe for the poor, or else 
we shall have poor-laws/^ That is to say, they enacted 
for themselves a poor-law in order to avoid having a 
poor-law enacted for them. It is absurd to talk of 
Queen Ehzabeth'^s act as creating the poor-laws of 
this country. The poor-rates are the consideration 
paid by, or on behalf of, capitalists for having labour 
at demand. It is the price, and nothing else. The 
hardsliip consists in the agricultural interest having to 
pay an undue proportion of the rates ; for although, 
perhaps, in the end, the land becomes more valuable, 
yet, at the first, the landowners have to bear all the 
brunt. I tliink there ought to be a fixed revolving 
period for the equalisation of rates. 



CONDUCT OF THE T^•HIGS. 17 

April 28, 1823. 
CondiLct of the Whigs. — Reform of the House of Coramons. 

THE coiiduct of the Wliigs is extravagantly incon- 
sistent. It originated in the fatal error which 
Fox committed^ in persisting^ after the fii'st tliree 
years of the French Eevolntion^ when every shadow 
of freedom in France had vanished^ in eulogizing the 
men and measures of that shallow-hearted people. So 
lie went on gradually^ further and farther departing 
from all the principles of English policy and wisdom, 
till at length he became the panegyrist^ thi^ough thick 
and thin, of a military fi^enzy, under the influence of 
which the very name of liberty was detested. And 
thus it was that, in course of time, Fox^s party 
became the absolute abettors of the Buonapartean 
invasion of Spain, and did all in their power to thwart 
the generous efforts of this country to resist it. Xow, 
when the invasion is by a Boui'bon, and the cause of 
the Spanish nation neither united nor, indeed, sound 
in many respects, the Whigs would precipitate this 
country into a crusade to fight up the cause of a 
faction. 

I have the honour of being slightly known to my 
Lord Darnley. In 1808-9, I met him accidentally, 
when, after a few words of salutation, he said to me, 
^^Are you mad, IMr. Coleridge ?^^ — " jS'ot that I 
know, my lord/^ I replied ; '^ what have I done which 
argues any derangement of mind V^ — ''^Why,Imean,^^ 
said he, ^^ those letters of yours in the Courier, ^ On 
the Hopes and Fears of a People invaded by foreign 
Armies."' The Spaniards are absolutely conquered; 
it is absurd to talk of their chance of resisting.''^ — 



18 coleeidge's table talk. 

^^ "Very well^ my lord/^ I said, " we shall see. Bat 
win your lordship permit me, in the course of a year 
or two, to retort your question upon you, if I should 
have grounds for so doing V — ^' Certainly V said he ; 
^*"that is fair!^^ Two years afterwards, when affairs 
were altered in Spain, I met Lord Darnley again, and, 
after some conversation, ventured to say to him, " Does 
your lordship recollect giving me leave to retort a 
certain question upon you about the Spaniards ? Who 
is mad now? ^^ — "Very true, very true, Mr. Coleridge,'^ 
cried he : " you are right. It is very extraordinary. 
It was a very happy and bold guess."'^ Upon wliich I 
remarked, "I think ^ guess' is hardly a fair term. 
For, has an}i:liing happened that has happened, from 
any other causes, or under any other conditions, than 
such as I laid down beforehand ?^^ Lord Darnley, 
who was always very courteous to me, took tliis with 
a pleasant nod of his head. 



Many votes are given for reform in the House of 
Commons, which are not honest. Whilst it is well 
known that the measure wiU not be carried in Parlia- 
ment, it is as well to purchase some popularity by 
voting for it. When Hunt and his associates, before 
the Six Acts, created a panic, the Ministers lay on 
their oars for tln-ee or four montlis, until the general 
cry, even from the Opposition, was, " Why don^t the 
Ministers come forward with some protective mea- 
sure V The present Ministry exists on the weakness 
and desperate character of the Opposition. The sober 
part of the nation are afraid of the latter getting into 
power, lest they should redeem some of their pledges. 



CHURCH OF ROME. 19 

April 29, 1823. 
Church of Rome, 

THE present adherents of the Church of Rome are 
not, in my judgment, CathoHcs. We are the 
CathoHcs. We can prove that we. hold the doctrines 
of the primitive Church for the first three hundred 
years. The Council of Trent made the Papists what 
they are.* A foreign Eomish bishop t has declared, 
that the Protestants of his acquaintance were more 
like what he conceived the enhghtened Catholics to 
have been before the Council of Trent, than the best 
of the latter in his days. Perhaps you will say, this 
bishop was not a good Cathohc. I cannot answer for 
that. The course of Christianity and the Christian 
Church may not unaptly be likened to a mighty river, 
which filled a wide channel, and bore along with its 
waters mud, and gravel, and weeds, till it met a great 
rock in the middle of its stream. By some means or 
other, the water flows purely, and separated from the 
filth, in a deeper and narrower course on one side of 
the rock, and the refuse of the dirt and troubled 
water goes off on the other in a broader current, and 
then cries out, ^^ We are the river V^ 



A person said to me lately, ^^But you will, for 
civiht/s sake, call them Catholics, will you not ?^^ I 
answered, that I would not ; for I would not tell a 
lie upon any, much less upon so solemn an, occasion. 
The adherents of the Church of Eome, I repeat, are 
not Catholic Christians. If they are, then it foUows 

* See " Aids to Reflection," p. 180, note. 
t Mr. Coleridge named Mm, but tlie name was strange to me, and I have 
been unable to recover it.— Ed. 

C 2 



30 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

that we Protestants are heretics and schismatics^ as, 
indeed, the Papists very logically, from their own 
premises, call us. And ^^ Roman Catholics^^ makes 
no difference. Catholicism is not capable of degrees 
or local apportionments. There can be but one body 
of Catholics, ex vi termini. To talk strictly of Irish 
or Scotch Roman Cathohcs is a mere absurdity. 

It is common to hear it said, that, if the legal dis- 
abilities are removed, the Eomish Church will lose 
ground in this country. I think the reverse : the 
Eomish rehgion is^ or, in certain hands, is capable of 
beiQg made, so flattering to the passions and self- 
delusion of men, that it is impossible to say how far 
it would spread^ amongst the liigher orders of society 
especially, if the secular disadvantages now attending 
its profession were removed.* 



April 30, 1823. 
Zendavesta, — Pantheism and Idolatry. 

nnHE Zendavesta must, I think, have been copied 
-*- in parts from the writings of Moses. In the 
description of the creation, the first chapter of Genesis 
is taken almost HteraUy, except that the sun is created 
ie/ore the light, and then the herbs and the plants 
after the sun ; wliicli are precisely the two points they 
did not understand, and therefore altered as errors.f 

• Here, at least, the prophecy has been fulfilled. The wisdom of our 
ancestors, in the reign of King William III., would have been jealous 
of the daily increase in the numbers of the Romish Church in England, of 
■which every attentive observer must be aware. See Sancti Dominici Fallium^ 
invol. ii. p, 80, of Mr. Coleridge's Poems. — Ed. 

t The Zend, or Zendavesta, is the sacred book ascribed to Zoroaster, or 
Zerdusht, the founder or reformer of the Magian religion. The modem edition 
or paraphrase of this work, called the Sadda, written in the Persian of the 
day was, I believe, composed about three hundred years ago. — Ed. 



DItEAMS AND GHOSTS. ^1 

There are only two acts of creation^ properly so 
called^ in the Mosaic account^ — the material universe, 
and man. The intermediate acts seem more as ihe 
results of secondary causes, or, at any rate, of a modi- 
fication of prepared materials. 

Pantheism and idolatry naturally end in each other ; 
for all extremes meet. The Judaic religion is the 
exact medium, the true compromise. 



May 1, 1823. 

Difference between Stories of Dreams and Ghosts. — Phantom 

Portrait. — Witch of Endor, — Socinianism, 

1"^HERE is a great difference in the credibility to 
- be attached to stories of dreams and stories of 
ghosts. Dreams have nothing in them which are 
absurd and nonsensical; and, though most of the 
coincidences may be readily explained by the diseased 
system of the dreamer, and the great and surprising 
power of association, yet it is impossible to say whether 
an inner sense does not really exist in the mind, 
seldom developed, indeed, but which may have a 
power of presentiment.* All the external senses 

* See this point suggested and reasoned witli extraordinary subtlety in 
tlie third essay (marked C), in the Appendix to the Statesman's Manual, or 
first Lay Sermon, p. 19, &c. One beautiful paragraph I will venture to 
quote : — " Not only may we expect that men of strong religious feelings, but 
little religious knowledge, will occasionally be tempted to regard such occur- 
rences as supernatural visitations ; but it ought not to surprise us if such 
dreams should sometimes be confirmed by the event, as though they had 
actually possessed a character of divination. For who shall decide how far 
a perfect reminiscence of past experiences (of many, perhaps, that had 
escaped our reflex consciousness at the time)— who shall determine to what 
extent this reproductive imagination, unsophisticated by the will, and undis- 
tracted by intrusions from the senses, may or may not be concentred and 
sublimed into foresight and presentiment ? There would be nothing herein 
either to foster superstition on the one hand, or to justify contemptuous 
disbelief on the other. Incredulity is but Credulity seen from behind, 
bowing and nodding assent to the Habitual and the Fashionable." — Ed. 



22 coleeidge's table talk. 

have their correspondents in the mind; the eye can 
see an object before it is distinctly apprehended; — 
why may there not be a corresponding power in the 
soul? The power of prophecy might have been 
merely a spiritual excitation of this dormant faculty. 
Hence you wiU observe that the Hebrew seers some- 
times seem to have required music^ as in the instance 
of Elisha before Jehoram : — " But now bring me a 
minstrel. And it came to pass^ when the minstrel 
played^ that the hand of the Lord came upon him.^^* 
Everji-liing in nature has a tendency to move in 
cycles; and it would be a miracle if, out of such 
myriads of cycles moving concurrently, some coinci- 
dences did not take place. No doubt, many such 
take place in the daytime ; but then our senses drive 
out the remembrance of them, and render the impres- 
sion hardly felt; but when we sleep, the mind acts 
without interruption. Terror and the heated imagi- 
nation will, even in the daytime, create all sorts of 
features, shapes, and colours out of a simple object 
possessing none of them in reahty. 

But ghost stories are absurd. Whenever a real 
ghost appears, — by which I mean some man or 
woman dressed up to frighten another, — if the super- 
natural character of the apparition has been for a 
moment believed, the effects on the spectator have 
always been most terrible, — convulsion, idiocy, mad- 
ness, or even death on the spot. Consider the awful 
descriptions in the Old Testament of the effects of a 
spiritual presence on the prophets and seers of the 
Hebrews ; the terror, • the exceeding great dread, the 
utter loss of all animal power. But in our common 

* 2 Kings, iii. 15, and see 1 Sam., x. 5.— Ed. 



GHOSTS. 23 



ghost stories, you always find tliat the seer, after a 
most apiDalling apparition, as yon are to believe, is 
quite well the next day. Perhaps, he may have a 
headache ; but that is the outside of the effect pro- 
duced. Alston, a man of genius, and the best painter 
yet produced by America, when he was in England 
told me an anecdote which confirms what I have been 
saying. It was, I think, in the University of Cam- 
bridge, near Boston, that a certain youth took it into 
his wise head to endeavour to convert a Tom-Painish 
companion of his by appearing as a ghost before him. 
He accordingly dressed himseK up in the usual way, 
ha^Tiig previously extracted the ball from the pistol 
which always lay near the head of his friend^s bed. 
Upon first awaking, and seeing the apparition, the 
youth who was to be fiightened. A., very coolly looked 
his companion the ghost in the face, and said, ^^ I 
know you. This is a good joke ; but you see I am 
not lightened. Xow you may vanish V' The ghost 
stood still. ^^ Come,^^ said A., ^^ that is enough. I 
shall get angry. Away!^^ Still the ghost moved 

not. '^ By /' ejaculated A., ^^ if you do not in 

three minutes go away, 1^11 shoot you."'^ He waited 
the time, deliberately levelled the pistol, fired, and, 
with a scream at the immobility of the figure, became 
convulsed, and afterwards died. The very instant 
he believed it to be a ghost, his human nature fell 
before it. 

* ^^ Last Thursday my uncle, S. T. C, dined with 
us, and several men came to meet hxim. I have heard 

* What follows in the text Trithin commas vrsis trritten about this time, and 
communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge.— Ed. 



24 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

him more brilliant^ but lie was very fine^ and delighted 
every one very much. It is impossible to carry off, 
or commit to paper^ his long trains of argument ; in- 
deed, it is not always possible to understand them, he 
lays the foundation so deep, and views every question 
in so original a manner. Nothing can be finer than 
the principles wliich he lays down in morals and 
religion. His deep study of Scripture is very astonish- 
ing ; the rest of the party were but as children in his 
hands, not merely in general views of theology, but 
in nice verbal criticism. He thinks it clear that St. 
Paul did not write the Epistle to the Hebrews, but 
that it must have been the work of some Alexandrian 
Greek, and he thinks Apollos. It seemed to him a 
desirable thing for Christianity that it should have 
been written by some other person than St. Paul; 
because, its inspiration being unquestioned, it added 
another independent teacher and expounder of the 
faith. 

^^ We feU upon ghosts, and he exposed many of 
the stories physically and metaphysically. He seemed 
to think it impossible that you should really see with 
the bodily eye what was impalpable, unless it were a 
shadow j and if what you fancied you saw with the 
bodily eye was in fact only an impression on the 
imagination, then you were seeing something out of 
your senses, and your testimony was full of uncertainty. 
He observed how uniformly, in all the best-attested 
stories of spectres, the appearance might be accounted 
for from the disturbed state of the mind or body of 
the seer, as in the instances of Dion and Brutus. 
Upon some one saying that he wished to believe these 
stories true, thinking that they constituted a useful 



THE PHANTOM PORTRAIT. 25 

subsidiary testimony of another state of existence, 
Mr. C. differed, and said, he thought it a dangerous 
testimony, and one not wanted : it was Saul, with the 
Scriptures and the Prophet before him, calling upon 
the witch of Endor to certify him of the truth ! He 
explained very ingeniously, yet very naturally, what 
has often startled people in ghost stories — such as 
Lord Lyttelton'^s — namely, that when a real person 
has appeared, habited like the phantom, the ghost- 
seer has immediately seen two, the real man and the 
phantom. He said that such must be the case. The 
man under the morbid delusion sees with the eye of 
the imagination, and sees with the bodily eye too ; if 
no one were really present, he would see the spectre 
with one, and the bed-curtains with the other. When, 
therefore, a real person comes, he sees the real man 
as he would have seen any one else in the same place, 
and he sees the spectre not a whit the less : being 
perceptible by different powers of vision, so to say, 
the appearances do not interfere with each other. 

^^ He told us the following story of the Phantom 
Portrait : — • 

* ^^ A stranger came recommended to a merchant's 
house at Lubeck. He was hospitably received; but, 
the house beiug full, he was lodged at night in an 
apartment handsomely furnished, but not often used. 
There was nothing that struck him particularly in the 
room when left alone, till he happened to cast his 
eyes on a picture, which immediately arrested his 
attention. It was a single head; but there was 

* This is the story -vrhich Mr. Washington Irving has dressed up very 
prettily in the first volume of his " Tales of a Traveller," pp. 84—119 ; pro- 
fessing in his preface that he could not rememher whence he had derived the 
anecdote. — Ed. 



26 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

sometliing so ancommon^ so friglitful and unearthly, 
in its expression, though by no means ugly, that he 
found himself irresistibly attracted to look at it. In 
fact, he could not tear himseK from the fascination of 
this portrait, till his imagination was filled by it, and 
his rest broken. He retired to bed, dreamed, and 
awoke from time to time with the head glaring on 
him. In the morning, his host saw by his looks that 
he had slept iU, and inquired the cause, which was 
told. The master of the house was much vexed, and 
said the picture ought to have been removed, that it 
was an oversight, and that it always was removed 
when the chamber was used. The picture, he said, 
was, indeed, terrible to every one ; but it was so fine, 
and had come into the family in so curious a way^ 
that he could not make up his mind to part with it, 
or to destroy it. The story of it was tliis : — ^ My 
father,^ said he, ^ was at Hamburgh on business, and, 
whilst dining at a coffee-house, he observed a young 
man of a remarkable appearance enter, seat himself 
alone in a corner, and commence a solitary meal. His 
countenance bespoke the extreme of mental distress, 
and every now and then he turned his head quickly 
round, as if he heard something, then shudder, grow 
pale, and go on with his meal after an effort as before. 
My father saw this same man at the same place for 
two or tliree successive days ; and at length became 
so much interested about him, that he spoke to 
him. The address was not repulsed, and the stranger 
seemed to find some comfort in the tone of sympathy 
and kindness wliich my father used. He was an 
Italian, well informed, poor but not destitute, and 
living economically upon the profits of his art as a 



WITCH or ENDOR. 27 

painter. Their intimacy increased; and at length 
the Itahan^ seeing my father^'s involuntary emotion at 
his convulsive turnings and shudderings^ wliich con- 
tinued as formerly^ interrupting their conversation 
from time to time, told him his story. He was a 
native of Rome, and had lived in some familiarity 
with, and been much patronised by, a young noble^ 
man ; but upon some slight occasion they had fallen 
out, and his patron, besides using many reproachful 
expressions, had struck him. The painter brooded 
over the disgrace of the blow. He could not challenge 
the nobleman, on account of his rank; he therefore 
watched for an opportunity, and assassiaated him. 
Of course he fled from his country, and finally ha^ 
reached Hamburgh. He had not, however, passed 
many weeks from the night of the murder, before, one 
day, in. the crowded street, he heard his name called 
by a voice familiar to him : he turned short round, 
and saw the face of his victim looking at him with a 
fixed eye. From that moment he had no peace : at 
all hours, in all places, and amidst all companies, 
however engaged he might be, he heard the voice, 
and could never help looldng round ; and, whenever 
he so looked round, he always encountered the same 
face staring close upon him. At last, in a mood of 
desperation, he had fixed himseK face to face, and eye 
to eye, and deliberately drawn the phantom visage as 
it glared upon him; and tMs was the picture so 
drawn. The Italian said he had struggled long, but 
life was a burden which he could now no longer bear; 
and he was resolved, when he had made money enough 
to return to Rome, to surrender himseK to justice, and 
expiate his crime on the scaffold. He gave the finished 



28 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

picture to my father^ in return for the kindness which 
he had shown him/ ^^ 



I have no doubt that the Jews believed generally in 
a future state^ independently of the Mosaic law. The 
story of the witch of Endor is a proof of it. What 
we translate ''witch,'' or ^^ familiar spirit/"* is^ in the 
Hebrew, Ob, that is, a bottle or bladder, and means 
a person whose belly is swelled like a leathern bottle 
by divine inflation. In the Greek it is kyyaarpiixvOoSy 
a ventriloquist. The text (1 Sam., ch. xxviii.) is a 
simple record of the facts, the solution of wliich the 
sacred liistorian leaves to the reader. I take it to 
have been a trick of ventriloquism, got up by the 
courtiers and friends of Saul, to prevent him, if pos- 
sible, from hazarding an engagement with an army 
despondent and oppressed with bodings of defeat. 
Saul is not said to have seen Samuel; the woman 
only pretends to see him. And then what does this 
Samuel do ? He merely repeats the prophecy known 
to aU Israel, which the true Samuel had uttered some 
years before. Eead Captain Lyon^s account of the 
scene in the cabin with the Esquimaux bladder, or 
conjurer ; it is impossible not to be reminded of the 
witch of Endor. I recommend you also to look at 
Webster^s admirable treatise on Witchcraft. 



The pet texts of a Socinian are quite enough for 
his confutation with acute thinkers. If Christ had 
been a mere man, it would have been ridiculous in 
him to caU himself ^Hhe Son of man/^ but being 
God and man, it then became, in his own assumption 
of it, a peculiar and mysterious title. So, if Christ 



RELIGIONS OF THE GREEKS. 29 

had been a mere man^ his sayings ""^My Father is 
greater than I^^ (John, xv. 28), would have been as 
unmeaning. It would be laughable enough, for 
example, to hear me say, " My ^ Eemorse^ succeeded, 
indeed, but Shakspeare is a greater dramatist than I." 
But how immeasurably more foohsh, more monstrous, 
would it not be for a man, however honest, good, or 
wise, to say, ^^But Jehovah is greater than I V^ 



May 8, 1824. 

Tlato and Xenophon. — Religions of the Greeks, — Egyptian 

Antiquities. — Milton, — Vh^giL 

P BATONS works are logical exercises for the mind. 
Little that is positive is advanced in them. So- 
crates may be fairly represented by Plato in the more 
moral parts ; but in aU the metaphysical disquisitions 
it is Pythagoras. Xenophon^s representation of his 
master is quite different.* 

Observe the remarkable contrast between the reli- 
gion of the tragic and other poets of Greece. The 
former are always opposed in heart to the popular 
divinities. In fact, there are the popular, the sacer- 
dotal, and the mysterious rehgions of Greece, repre- 
sented roughly by Homer, Pindar, and iEschylus, 
The ancients had no notion of a fall of man, though 
they had of his gradual degeneracy. Prometheus, in 
the old mythus, and for the most part in JSschylus, 
is the Eedeemer and the Devil jumbled together. 

I cannot say I expect much from mere Egyptian 
antiquities. Almost everything really, that is, intel- 
lectually, great m that country seems to me of Grecian 
origin. 

* See p. 10, n.— Ed. 



30 COLEEIDGE S TABLE TALK. 

I think nothing can be added to Milton^s definition 
or rule of poetry,, — that it ought to be simple, sensu- 
ouSj and impassioned ; that is to say, single in con- 
ception, abounding in sensible images, and informing 
them all with the spirit of the mind. 

Milton^s Latin style is, I think, better and easier 
than liis Enghsh. His style, in prose, is quite as 
characteristic of him as a pliilosophic repubHcan, as 
Cowle/s is of him as a fijst-rate gentleman. 

If you take from Yirgil his diction and metre, what 
do you leave him ? 



June 2, 1824. 
Granville Penn and the Deluge, — Rainbow, 

T CONTESS I have small patience with Mr. Granville 
-*- Penn"^s book against Professor Buckland. Science 
will be superseded, if every phenomenon is to be 
referred in tliis manner to an actual miracle. I think 
it absurd to attribute so much to the Deluge. An 
inundation, which left an olive-tree standing, and bore 
up the ark peacefully on its bosom, could scarcely 
have been the sole cause of the rents and dislocations 
observable on the face of the earth. How could 
the tropical animals, which have been discovered in 
England and in Russia in a perfectly natural state, 
have been transported thither by such a flood ? Those 
animals must evidently have been natives of the 
countries in which they have been found. The 
climates must have been altered. Assume a sudden 
evaporation upon the retiring of the Deluge to have 
caused an intense cold, the solar heat might not be 
sufficient afterwards to overcome it. I do not tliink 



GREEK ACOUSTICS. 8] 

that the pohir cold is adequately explamed by mere 
comparative distance from the sun. 



You will observe, that there is no mention of rain 
previously to the Deluge. Hence it may be inferred, 
that the rainbow was exlhbited for the first time after 
God^s covenant with Xoah. However, I only suggest 
this. 

The Earth with its scarred face is the symbol of 
the Past ; the Air and Heaven, of Futuiity. 



June 5, 1824. 
English and Greek Dancing. — Greek Acoustics, 

THE fondness for dancing in Enghsh women is the 
re-action of their reserved manners. It is the only 
way in which they can throw themselves forth in 
natural liberty. We have no adequate conception 
of the perfection of the ancient tragic dance. The 
pleasure which the Greeks received from it had for 
its basis Difference ; and the more unfit the vehicle, 
the more lively was the curiosity and intense the 
deho:ht at seeinc^ the difficultv overcome. 



The ancients certainly seem to have understood 
some principles in acoustics which we have lost, or, 
at least, they apphed them better. They contrived 
to convey the voice distinctly in their huge theatres 
by means of pipes, which created no echo or con- 
fusion. Our theatres — Drury Lane and Covent 
Garden — are fit for nothing : they are too large for 
acting, and too small for a bull-fight. 



82 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

June 7, 1824. 
Lord Byron's Versification, and Don Juan, 

HOW lamentably the art of versification is neglected 
by most of the poets of the present day ! — ^by 
Lord Byron^ as it strikes me^ in particular^ among 
those of eminence for other qnahties. Upon the 
whole^ I think the part of Don Juan in which 
Lambro^s return to his home^ and Lambro himself, 
are described^ is the best^ that is^ the most individual, 
thing in all I know of Lord B."'s works. The festal 
abandonment puts one in mind of Nicholas Poussin^s 
pictures.^ 

June 10, 1824. 

Parental Control in Marriage. — Marriage of Cousins, — Difference 
of Character. 

UP to twenty-one^ I hold a father to have power 
over his cliildren as to marriage ; after that age, 
authority and influence only. Show me one couple 
unhappy merely on account of their hmited circum- 
stances, and I will show you ten that are wretched 
from other causes, 

* Mr. Coleridge particularly noticed, for its classical air, the 32nd stanza 
of this Canto (the third) : — 

" A band of children, round a snow-white ram, 
There wreathe his venerable horns with flowers, 

While, peaceful as if still an unwean'd lamb, 
The patriarch of the flock all gently cowers 

His sober head, majestically tame. 

Or eats from out the palm, or playful lowers 

His brow, as if in act to butt, and then 

Yielding to their small hands, draws back again." 

But Mr. C. said that tJien, and again, made no rhyme to his ear. Why should 
not the old form agen be lawful in verse? We wilfully abridge ourselves of 
the liberty which our great poets achieved and sanctioned for us in innu- 
merable instances.— Ed. 



BLUMEXBACH^S BACES. 33 

If the matter were quite open, I should incHne to 
disapprove the intermarriage of first • cousins ; but 
the church has decided otherwise on the authority of 
Augustme, and that seems enough upon such a point. 

You may depend upon it^ that a slight contrast of 
character is very material to happiness in marriage. 



February 24, 1827. 

Blumenlach and Kanfs Eace^.—Iapetic and Semitic. — Hebrew. — 
Solomon. 

T3Lr]^IEXBACH makes five races; Kant, three. 

-■-^ Blumenbach^s scale of dignity may be thus 

figured : — 

1. 

Caucasian or Enropean. 



American. 




Mongolian = 
, Asiatic. 

There was, I conceive, one great lapetic original 
of language, under which Greek, Latin, and other 
European dialects, and, perhaps, Sanscrit, range as 
species. The lapetic race, 'laoi-es, separated into two 
branches; one, with a tendency to migTate south- 
west, — Greeks, Italians, kc. ; and the other north- 
west, — Goths, Germans, S^^edes, kc. The Hebrew 
is Semitic. 

Hebrew, in point of force and purity, seems at its 
height in Isaiah. It is most con^upt in Daniel, and 
not much less so in Ecclesiastes ; which I cannot be- 
lieve to have been actually composed by Solomon, but 



34? COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

rather suppose to have been so attributed by the Jews^ 
in their passion for ascribing all works of that sort to 
their grand monarque. 



March 10, 1827. 
Jewish History, — Spinozistic and Hebrew Schemes. 

^HE people of all other nations^ but the Jewish, 
-^ seem to look backwards and also to exist for the 
present ; but in the Jewish scheme everything is pro- 
spective and preparatory; notliing, however trifling, 
is done for itself alone, but aU is typical of something 
yet to come. 

I would rather call the Book of Proverbs Solomonian 
than as actually a work of Solomon^s. So I appre- 
hend many of the Psalms to be Davidical only, not 
David^s own compositions. 



You may state the Pantheism of Spinosa, in con- 
trast with the Hebrew or Cliristian scheme, shortly, 
as thus : — 

Spinosism. 

W — G=0 ; L e, the World without God is an 
impossible idea. 

G-W=0; i,e, God without the World is so 
likewise. 

Hebrew or Christian scheme. 

W — G = ; i,e. The same as Spinosa's premiss. 
ButG-xW=G; Le. God without the World is God 

the seK-subsistent. 



ENERGY OF MAN AND OTHEU ANI^MALS. 35 

March 12, 1827. 

Roman Catholics. — Energij of Man and other A niinals. — ShaJcspeare 

in minimis. — Paul Sarpi, — Bartram^s Travels. 

I HAVE no doubt that the real object closest to the 
hearts of the leading Irish Eomanists is the de- 
struction of the Irish Protestant Churchy and the 
re-establisliment of their own. I think more is in- 
volved in the manner than the matter of legislating 
upon the civil disabilities of the members of the 
Chui'ch of Eome; and^ for one^ I should be wiUing 
to vote for a removal of those disabihties^ with two or 
three exceptions^ upon a solemn declaration being 
made legislatively in Parliament, that at no time^ nor 
under any circumstances, could or should a branch 
of the Romish hierarchy^ as at present constituted, 
become an estate of this realm.* 



Internal or mental energy and external or corporeal 
modificabihty are in inverse proportions. In man, 
internal energy is greater than in any other animal ; 
and you will see that he is less changed by climate 
than any animal. Por the highest and lowest speci- 
mens of man are not one half so much apart from 
each other as the different kinds even of dogs, animals 
of great internal energy themselves. 

Por an instance of Shakspeare^s power in minimis, 
I generally quote James Gurne/s character in King 
John. How indi\ddual and comical he is with the 
four words allowed to his dramatic life ! f And pray 
look at Skelton^s Eichard Sparrow also ! 

* See Chmxjli and State, second part, p. 189. 
t " Enter Lady Falco^tbeidge and James Gueney. 

Bast. O me ! it is my mother : — How now, good lady ? 
What brings you here to court so hastily ? 



36 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Paul Sarpf s History of the Council of Trent de- 
serves yonx study. It is very interesting. 



The latest book of travels I know^ written in the 
spirit of the old travellers^ is Bartram'^s account of his 
tour in the Tloridas. It is a work of high merit 



every way.* 



March 13, 1827. 
The Understanding. 

A PUN wiU sometimes facilitate explanation^ as 
-^ thus ; — the Understanding is that which stands 
under the phenomenon^ and gives it objectivity. You 
know what a tiling is by it. It is also worthy of 
remark^ that the Hebrew w^ord for the understand- 
ing, Bineh, comes from a root meaning between or 
distinguishing. 

Lady F. TVhere is that slave, thy brother ? where is he ? 
That holds in chase mine honour up and down ? 

Bast. My brother Robert? Old Sir Robert's son? 
Colbrand the giant, that same mighty man? 
Is it Sir Robert's son that you seek so? 

Lady F. Sir Robert's son ! Ay, thou unreverend boy, 
Sir Robert's son ; why scom'st thou at Sir Robert? 
He is Sir Robert's son ; and so art thou. 

Bast. James Gurney, wilt thou give us leave a while ? 

GuE. Good leave, good Philip. 

Bast. Philip? — Sparrow! James, 
There 's toys abroad ; anon I '11 tell thee more. 

{Exit GUBNEY." 

The very exit Gurney is a stroke of James's character. — Ed. 

* " Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West 
Florida, the Cherokee Country, the extensive territories of the Muscogulges, 
or Creek Confederacy, and the Country of the Chactaws, &c. By W^illiam 
Bartram." Philadelphia, 1791. London, 1792. 8vo. The expedition was 
made at the request of Dr. Fothergill, the Quaker physician, in 1773, and was 
particularly directed to botanical discoveries.— Ed. 



PARTS OF SPEECH. GRAM:\IAII. 37 

March 18, 1827. 
Parts of Speech. — Grammar. 

T^HEEE are seven parts of speech^ and they agree 
-^ with the five grand and universal divisions into 
wliich all things finite^ by which I mean to exclude 
the idea of God^ will be found to fall ; that is^ as you 
will often see it stated in my writings^ especially in 
the Aids to Eeflection :* — 

Prothesis. 

1. 

Thesis. Mesothesis. Antithesis. 

2. 4. 3. 

Synthesis. 

5. 

Conceive it thus : — 

1. Prothesis^ the noun- verb, or verb-substantive, 
/ am, which is the previous form, and imphes identity 
of being and act. 

rTote, each of these may be 
converted ; that is, they 
are only opposed to each 
other. 

4. Mesothesis, the infinitive mood, or the indiffer- 
ence of the verb and noun, it being either the one 
or the other, or both at the same time, in different 
relations. 

5. Synthesis, the participle, or the community of 
verb and noun ; being an acting at once. 

Now, modify the noun by the verb, that is, by an 
act, and you have — 
: 6. The adnoun, or adjective. 

* p. 170, 2nd edition. 



38 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Modify the verb by the noun^ that is^ by being, 
and you have — 

7. The adverb. 

Interjections are parts of sound, not of speech. 
Conjunctions are the same as propositions ; but they 
are prefixed to a sentence, or to a member of a sen- 
tence, instead of to a single word. 

The inflexions of nouns are modifications as to 
place j the inflexions of verbs, as to time. 

The genitive case denotes dependence; the dative, 
transmission. It is absurd to talk of verbs governing. 
In Thucydides, I believe, every case has been found 
absolute.* 

The inflexions of the tenses of a verb are formed 
by adjuncts of the verb substantive. In Greek it is 
obvious. The E is the prefix significative of a past time. 



June 15, 1827. 

Magnetism. — Electncity, — Galvanism. 

"PERHAPS the attribution or analogy may seem 
-A fanciful at first sight, but I am in the habit of 
reahsing to myself Magnetism as length ; Electricity 
as breadth or surface ; and Galvanism as depth. 

* Nominative absolute : — ^loJv Ss to^oq vi avd^uruv voiJu>? ol'Bu? u^H^yi, ro 

fjLiv xfifvovTi? Iv ou-ciCf) xa) (TiQiiv %act fjcv] T<wv ^l oc/xaoryifjiMrcjv oi/^us 

\XTlt,ci)f i^-Xi* "^^u hiZ.Y,y yiviirdui (Siovq eiv Tr,9 Ti/xcu^tocv ocvrt^ovvoci. — 
Thuc. IT. 53. 

Dative: — li ^'yofx,ivot<; ocvrol^ rvi? Ba.Xa.(r(r'^<; tcou xarcc yy.v ^o^QoufJuivoi^ 
Ivg;^^''?''^^*' fi^^i «"^o? 'A^/jva/oys aya.yilv ty,v rroXiv. — Thuc. VIII. 24. 

This is the Latin usage. 

Accusative. — I do not remember an instance of the proper accusative 
absolute in Thucydides ; but it seems not uncommon in other authors ; — 
a |hv£, f^r, B-(X,CjU,(x,^i cr^o; to A/Tafg?, 
Tixv' il ^ctvivT ociXfrra fjii^xvyxt) \oyov. 

Soph. a':d. C. 1119. 
Yet all such instances may be nominatives ; for I cannot find an example of 
the accusative absolute in the masculine or feminine gender, where the 
difference of inflexion -would show the case. — Ed. 



CHArwVCTEE, OF OTHELLO. 39 



June 24, 1827. 

Spenser. — Character of Othello. — Hamlet. — Polonius. — Principles 
and Maxims. — Love. — Measure for Measure. — Ben Jonson. — 
Beaumont and Fletcher. — Version of the Bible. — Spurzheim. — 
Ci'aniology. 

SPENSEE'S Epitlialamion is truly sublime; and 
pray mark the swan-like movement of his exqui- 
site Prothalamion.* His attention to metre and 
rhytlmi is sometimes so extremely minute as to be 
painful even to my ear^ and you know how highly I 
prize good versification. 

I have often told you that I do not tliink there is 
any jealousy, properly so called, in the character of 
Othello. There is no predisposition to suspicion, 
wliich I take to be an essential term in the definition 
of the word. Desdemona very truly told Emilia that 
he was not jealous, that is, of a jealous habit, and he 

* Ho-w Trell I remember this Midsummer-day ! I shall never pass such 
another. The sun -w^as setting behind Caen Wood, and the calm of the 
evening was so exceedingly deep that it arrested Mr. Coleridge's attention. 
We vreYQ alone together in Mr. Gillman's dra^Ting-room, and Mr. C. left 
off talking, and fell into an almost trance-like state for ten minutes whilst 
contemplating the beautiful prospect before us. His eyes swam in tears, 
his head inclined a little forward, and there was a slight uplifting of the 
fingers, which seemed to tell me that he was in prayer. I was awe-stricken, 
and remained absorbed in looking at the man, in forgetfulness of external 
nature, when he recovered himself, and after a word or two fell by some 
secret link of association upon Spenser's poetry. Upon my telling him that 
I did not very well recollect the Prothalamion : " Then I must read you a bit 
of it," said he ; and fetching the book from the next room, he recited the whole 
of it in his finest and most musical manner. I particularly bear in mind the 
sensible diversity of tone and rhythm with which he gave : — 

" Sweet Thames ! run softly till I end my song," 
the concluding line of each of the ten strophes of the poem. 

When I look upon the scanty memorial, which I have alone preserved 
of this afternoon's converse, I am tempted to burn these pages in despair. 
Mr. Coleridge talked a volume of criticism that day, which, printed verbatim 
as he spoke it, would have made the reputation of any other person but 
himself. He was, indeed, particularly brilliant and enchanting; and I left 
him at night so thoroughly magnetized, that I could not for two or three days 
afterwards reflect enough to put anything on paper. — Ed. 



40 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

says so as truly of himself. lago^s suggestions, you 
see, are quite new to him; they do not correspond 
with anything of a like nature previously in his mind. 
If Desdemona had, in fact, been guilty, no one would 
have thought of caUing OtheUo^s conduct that of a 
jealous man. He could not act otherwise than he 
did with the lights he had; whereas jealousy can 
never be strictly right. See how utterly unlike 
Othello is to Leontes, in the Winter^s Tale, or even 
to Leonatus, in Cymbeline ! The jealousy of the first 
proceeds from an evident trifle, and something Kke 
hatred is mingled with it ; and the conduct of Leonatus 
in accepting the wager, and exposing his wife to the 
trial, denotes a jealous temper aheady formed. 

Hamlet^s character is the prevalence of the abstract- 
ing and generalising habit over the practical. He 
does not want courage, skill, will, or opportunity ; but 
every incident sets him thinking ; and it is curious, 
and at the same time strictly natural, that Hamlet, 
who aU the play seems reason itself, shonld be impelled, 
at last, by mere accident to effect his object. I have 
a smack of Hamlet myself, if I may say so. 

A Maxim is a conclusion upon observation of 
matters of fact, and is merely retrospective : an Idea, 
or, if you Hke, a Principle, carries knowledge within 
itself, and is prospective. Polonius is a man of 
maxims. Whilst he is descanting on matters of past 
experience, as in that excellent speech to Laertes before 
he sets out on liis travels,* he is admirable ; but when 
he comes to advise or project, he is a mere dotard. 
You see Hamlet, as the man of ideas, despises him. 

* Act. i. sc. 3. 



HAMLET. LOVE. 41 



A man of maxims only is like a Cyclops with one 
eye^ and that eye placed in the back of his head. 

In the scene with Opheha^ in the third act^* Hamlet 
is beginning with great and unfeigned tenderness; 
but percei\ing her reserve and coyness^ fancies there 
are some listeners^ and then^ to sustain his part, breaks 
out into all that coarseness. 



Love is the admiration and cherisliing of the 
amiable quahties of the beloved person^ upon the 
condition of yourself being the object of their action. 
The quahties of the sexes correspond. The man^s 
courage is loved by the woman^ whose fortitude again 
is coveted by the man. His vigorous intellect is 
answei;ed by her infaUible tact. Can it be true what 
is so constantly af&rmed^ that there is no sex in souls ? 
— I doubt it^ I doubt it exceedingly.f 

* Sc. 1. 

t Mr. Coleridge was a great master in the art of love, tut lie had not 
studied in Ovid's school. Hear his account of the matter : — 

" Love, truly such, is itself not the most common thing in the ^vorld, and 
mutual love still less so. But that enduring personal attachment, so beauti- 
fully delineated by Erin's sweet melodist, and still more touchingly, perhaps, 
in the well-knoTm ballad, ' John Anderson, my Jo, John,' in addition to a 
depth and constancy of character of no every-day occurrence, supposes a 
peculiar sensibility and tenderness of nature; a constitutional communi- 
cativeness and utterancy of heart and soul; a delight in the detail of 
sympathy, in the out^rard and visible signs of the sacrament Trithin, — to 
count, as it were, the pulses of the life of love. But, above all, it supposes a 
soul -which, even in the pride and summer-tide of life, even in the lustihood 
of health and strength, had felt oftenest and prized highest that which age 
cannot take away, and which in all our lovings is the love ; I mean, that 
willing sense of the unsufficingness of the self for itself, which predisposes a 
generous nature to see, in the total being of another, the supplement and 
completion of its own ; that quiet perpetual seeking which the presence of 
the beloved object modulates, not suspends, where the heart momently finds, 
and, finding again, seeks on; lastly, when 'life's changeful orb has passed 
the full,' a confirmed faith in the nobleness of humanity, thus brought home 
and pressed, as it were, to the very bosom of hourly experience ; it supposes, 
,1 say, a heartfelt reverence for worth, not the less deep because divested of 
its solemnity by habit, by familiarity, by mutual infirmities, and even by a 
feeling of modesty which will arise in delicate minds, when they are con- 



42 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Measiixe for Measure is the single exception to the 
dehghtfulness of Shakspeare^s plays. It is a hateful 
work^ although Shaksperian throughout. Our feel- 
ings of justice are grossly wounded in Angelo^s escape. 
Isabella herself contrives to be unamiable^ and Claudio 
is detestable. 

I am inclined to consider The Pox as the greatest 
of Ben Jonson^s works. But his smaller works are 
full of poetry. 

Monsieur Thomas and the Httle Prench Lawyer 
are great favourites of mine amongst Beaumont and 
Fletcher^s plays. How those plays overflow with 
wit ! And yet I scarcely know a more deeply tragic 
scene any where than that in EoUo^ in which ^ Edith 
pleads for her father^ s life^ and then^ when she cannot 
prevail^ rises up and imprecates vengeance on his 
murderer.* 

scious of possessing the same, or the correspondent, excellence in their owti 
characters. In short, there must he a mind, which, while it feels the 
beautiful and the excellent in the beloved as its own, and bv right of love 
appropriates it, can call goodness its playfellow ; and dares make sport of 
time and infirmity, while, in the person of a thousand-foldly endeared 
partner, we feel for aged virtue the caressing fondness that belongs to the 
innocence of childhood, and repeat the same attentions and tender courtesies 
which had been dictated by the same affection to the same object when 
attired in feminine loveliness or in manly beauty." (Poetical Works, vol. ii. 
p. 120.)— Ed. 
* Act iii. sc. 1.: — 

" RoLLO. Hew off her hands ! 
Hammond. Lady, hold off! 

Edith. No ! hew 'em ; 

Hew off my innocent hands, as he commands you I 

They '11 hang the faster on for death's convulsion. — 

Thou seed of rocks, will nothing move thee, then ? 

Are all my tears lost, all my righteous prayers 

Drown' d in thy drunken wrath ? I stand up thus, then, 

Thou boldly bloody tyrant, 

And to thy face, in heav'n's high name defy thee ! 

And may sweet mercy, when thy soul sighs for it, — 

^V hen under thy black mischiefs thy flesh trembles. 



CKANIOLOGY. 43 



Our version of the Bible is to be loved and prized 
for this^ as for a thousand other things^ — that it has 
preserved a purity of meaning to many terms of natural 
objects. Without this holdfast, our vitiated imagina- 
tions would refine away language to mere abstractions. 
Hence the French have lost their poetical language ; 
and Mr. Blanco White says the same thing has hap- 
pened to the Spanish. 

I have the perception of individual images very 
strong, but a dim one of the relation of place. I re- 
member the man or the tree, but where I saw them 
I mostly forget.* 

Craniology is worth some consideration, although 
it is merely in its rudiments and guesses yet. But 
all the coincidences which have been observed could 
scarcely be by accident. The confusion and absurdity, 
however, will be endless until some names or proper 

When neither strength, nor youth, nor friends, nor gold, 
Can stay one hour; when thy most wretched conscience. 
Waked from her dream of death, like fire shall melt thee, — 
When all thy mother's tears, thy brother's wounds, 
Thy people's fears, and curses, and my loss, 

My aged father's loss, shall stand before thee 

EoLLo. Save him, I say; run, save him, save her father; 
Fly and redeem his head ! 
Edith. May then that pity," &c. 

* There was no man whose opinion in morals, or even in a matter of general 
conduct in life, if you furnished the pertinent circumstances, I would have 
sooner adopted than Mr. Coleridge's ; but I would not take him as a guide 
through streets or fields or earthly roads. He had much of the geometrician 
about him ; but he could not find his way. In this, as in many other pecu- 
liarities of more importance, he inherited strongly from his learned and 
excellent father, who deserves, and will, I trust, obtain, a separate notice for 
himself when his greater son's life comes to be written. I believe the 
beginning of Mr. C.'s liking for Dr. Spurzheim was the hearty good humour 
with which the Doctor bore the laughter of a party, in the presence of which 
he, unknowing of his man, denied any Ideality, and awarded an unusual 
share of Locality, to the majestic silver-haired head of my dear uncle and 
, father-in-law. But Mr. Coleridge immediately shielded the craniologist 
under the distinction preserved in the text, and perhaps, since that time, 
there may be a couple of organs assigned to the latter faculty. — Ed. 



44 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

terms are discovered for the organs^ which are not 
taken from their mental apphcation or significancy. 
The forepart of the head is generally given up to the 
higher intellectual powers; the hinder part to the 
sensual emotions. 

. Silence does not always mark wisdom. I was at 
dinner^ some time ago^ in company with a man^ who 
listened to me and said nothing for a long time ; but 
he nodded his head^ and I thought him intelligent. 
At lengthy towards the end of the dinner, some apple 
dumplings were placed on the table, and my man 
had no sooner seen them, than he burst forth with — 
'^Them"'s the jockies for me !^^ I wish Spurzheim 
could have examined the fellow^s head. 



Some folks apply epithets as boys do in making 
Latin verses. When I first looked upon the Palls of 
the Clyde, I was unable to find a word to express 
my feelings. At last, a man, a stranger to me, who 
arrived about the same time, said: — ^^How majestic \" 
— (It was the precise term, and I turned round and 
was saying — ^^ Thank you. Sir ! that is the exact word 
for it^^ — when he added, eodem flatv) — ^^ Yes ! how 
N^Y^ pretty !^^ 

July 8, 1827. 
Bull and Waterland, — Tfie Trinity, 

BULL and Waterland are the classical writers on 
the Trinity.* In the Trinity there is, 1. Ipseity. 

* Mr. Coleridge's admiration of Bull and Waterland as high theologians, 
was very great. Bull he used to read in the Latin Defensio Fidei Nicaenae, 
using the Jesuit Zola's edition of 1784, which, I think, he bought at Rome. 
He told me once, that when he was reading a Protestant English Bishop's 
work on the Trinity, in a copy edited by an Italian Jesuit in Italy, he felt 
proud of the church of England, and in good humour with the church of 
Eome,— Ed, 



THE TRINITY. 45 



2. Alterity. 3. Coimnmiity. You may express the 
formula thus : — 

God^ the absolute Will or Identity^ =Prothesis. 

The Father = Thesis. The Son = Antithesis. The 

Spirit = Synthesis. 

The author of the Athanasian Creed is untnown. 
It is^ in my judgment^ heretical in the omission^ or 
implicit denial^ of the Fihal subordination in the God- 
head^ which is the doctrine of the Nicene Creed, and 
for which Bull and Waterland have so fervently and 
triumphantly contended ; and by not holding to which, 
Sherlock staggered to and fro between Tritheism and 
SabeUianism. This creed is also tautological, and, 
if not persecuting, wliich I will not discuss, certainly 
containing harsh and ill-conceived language. 

How much I regret that so many religious persons 
of the present day think it necessary to adopt a certain 
cant of manner and pliraseology as a token to each 
other. They must improve this and that text, and 
they must do so and so in d. prayerful way; and so on. 
Why not use common language ? A young lady the 
other day urged upon me that such and such feel- 
ings were the marrow of all religion ; upon which I 
recommended her to try to walk to London upon her 
marrow-bones only. 



July 9, 1827. 

Scale of Animal Being. 

IN the very lowest link in the vast and mysterious 
chain of Being, there is an effort, although scarcely 
apparent, at individuahsation ; but it is almost lost 
in the mere nature. A little higher up, the individual 



46 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

is apparent and separate, but subordinate to anything 
in man. At lengthy the animal rises to be on a par 
with the lowest power of the human nature. There 
are some of our natural desires which only remain in 
our most perfect state on earth as means of the higher 
powers^ acting.* 

* These remarks seem to call for a citation of that wonderful passage, 
transcendant alike in eloquence and philosophic depth, which the readers of 
the " Aids to Reflection " have long since laid up in cedar : — 

" Every rank of creatures, as it ascends in the scale of creation, leaves 
death behind it or under it. The metal at its height of being seems a mute 
prophecy of the coming vegetation, into a mimic semblance of which it 
crystallizes. The blossom and flower, the acme of vegetable life, divides 
into correspondent organs with reciprocal functions, and by instinctive 
motions and approximations seems impatient of that fixure, by which it is 
differenced in kind from the flower-shaped Psyche that flutters with free 
wing above it. And wonderfully in the insect realm doth the irritability, 
the proper seat of instinct, while yet the nascent sensibility is subordinate 
thereto,— most wonderfully, I say, doth the muscular life in the insect, and 
the musculo-arterial in the bird, imitate and typically rehearse the adaptive 
understanding, yea, and the moral affections and charities of man. Let us 
carry ourselves back, in spirit, to the mysterious week, the teeming work- 
days of the Creator, as they rose in vision before the eye of the inspired 
historian " of the generations of the heaven and earth, in the days that 
the Lord God made the earth and the heavens," And who that hath watched 
their ways with an understanding heart, could, as the vision evohdng still 
advanced towards him, contemplate the filial and loyal bee; the home- 
building, wedded, and divorceless swallow ; and, above all, the manifoldly 
intelligent ant tribes, with their commonwealth and confederacies, their 
warriors and miners, the husband-folk, that fold in their tiny flocks on the 
honied leaf, and the virgin sisters with the holy instincts of maternal love, 
detached and in selfless purity, and not say to himself. Behold the shadow of 
approaching Humanity, the sun rising from behind, in the kindling mom of 
creation ! Thus all lower natures find their highest good in semblances and 
seekings of that which is higher and better. All things strive to ascend, 
and ascend in their striving. And shall man alone stoop ? Shall his pur- 
suits and desires, the reflections of his inward life, be like the reflected image 
of a tree on the edge of a pool, that grows downward, and seeks a mock 
heaven in the unstable element beneath it, in neighbourhood with the slim 
water-weeds and oozy bottom-grass that are yet better than itself and more 
noble, in as far as substances that appear as shadows are preferable to 
shadows mistaken for substance ! No ! it must be a higher good to make 
you happy. While you labour for anything below your proper humanity, 
you seek a happy life in the region of death. Well saith the moral poet : — 

* Unless above himself he can 
Erect himself, how mean a thing is man ! ' " 

P .105, 2nd ed.— Ed. 



SCANDEEBEG. LUTHER. BAXTER. 47 

July 12, 1827. 

Popedom. — Scanderbeg. — Tliomas a BecTcet. — Pure Ages of GreeTc, 
Italian^ and English. — Luther. — Baxter. — Algernon Sidney's 
Style. — Ariosto and Tasso. — Prose and Poetry. — The Fathers. 
Bhenferd. — Jacob Behmen. 

WHAT a grand subject for a liistory the Popedom 
is ! The Pope ought never to have affected 
temporal swav^ but to have hved retired "witliin 
St. Angelo^ and to have trusted to the superstitious awe 
inspired by his character and office. He spoiled his 
chance when he meddled in the petty Itahan politics. 



Scanderbeg would be a very fine subject for "Walter 
Scott ; and so would Thomas a Becket^ if it is not 
rather too much for liim. It involves in essence the 
conflict between arms^ or force^ and the men of letters. 



Observe the superior truth of language^ in Greeks to 
Theocritus inclusively ; in Latin-, to the Augustan age 
exclusively ; in Italian^ to Tasso exclusively ; and in 
English^ to Taylor and Barrow inclusively. 

Luther is, in parts, the most evangehcal writer I 
know, after the apostles and apostoKc men. 

Pray read with great attention Baxter^ s Life of 
himself. It is an inestimable work.* I may not 
unfrequently doubt Baxter^s memory, or even his 

* TMs, a very tliick folio of ttie old sort, was one of Mr. Coleridge's text 
books for Euglish church history. He used to say that there was no sub- 
stitute for it in a course of study for a clergyman or public man, and that 
the modem political Dissenters, who affected to glory in Baxter as a leader, 
would read a bitter lecture on themselves in every page of it. In a marginal 
note I find Mr. C. writing thus: "Alas! in how many respects does my lot 
resemble Baxter's ! But how much less have my bodily evils been, and yet 
how very much greater an impediment have I suffered them to be ! But 
verily Baxter's labours seem miracles of supporting grace." — Ed. 



48 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

competence^ in consequence of his particular modes 
of thinking; but I could almost as soon doubt 
the Gospel verity as his veracity. 



I am not enough read in Puritan divinity to know 
the particular objections to the surplice^ over and 
above the general prejudice against the retenta of 
Popery. Perhaps that was the only ground, — a foolish 
one enough. 

In my judgment BoHngbroke^s style is not in any 
respect equal to that of Cowley or Dryden. Eead 
Algernon Sidney ; his style reminds you as little of 
books as of blackguards. What a gentleman he was ! 

Burke^s Essay on the Sublime and Beautiful seems 
to me a poor tiling ; and what he says upon Taste is 
neither profound nor accurate. 



Well ! I am for Ariosto against Tasso ; though I 
would rather praise Ariosto^s poetry than his poem. 



I wish our clever young poets would remember my 
homely definitions of prose and poetry ; that is^ prose 
= words in their best order ; — ^poetry = the lest 
words in the best order. 



I conceive Origen^ Jerome, and Augustine to be 
the three great fathers in respect of theology, and 
Bazil, Gregory Nazianzen, and Chrysostom in respect 
of rhetoric. 

Ehenferd possessed the immense learning and 
robust sense of Selden, with the acuteness and wit of 
Jortin. 



KESTOKATION. 49 



Jacob Bellmen remarked^ that it was not wonderful 
that there were separate languages for England^ France^ 
Germany^ &c. ; but rather that there was not a dif- 
ferent language for every degree of latitude. In 
confu'mation of wliich^ see the infinite variety of 
languages amongst the barbarous tribes of South 
America. 



July 20, 1827. 
N(m-perceptio7i of Colours, 

TT7HAT is said of some persons not being able to 
' * distinguish colours^ I beheve. It may proceed 
from general weakness^ which will render the differ- 
ences imperceptible^ just as the dusk or twilight makes 
all colours one. Tliis defect is most usual in the blue 
ray^ the negative pole. 

I conjecture that when finer experiments have been 
applied^ the red^ yellow^ and orange rays will be found 
as capable of communicating magnetic action as the 
other rays^ though^ perhaps^ under different circum- 
stances. Eemember tliis^ if you are alive twenty years 
hence^ and think of me. 



July 21, 1827. 
Restoration. — Reformation. 

THE elements had been weU shaken together 
during the civil wars and interregnum under 
the Long Parliament and Protectorate ; and nothing 
but the cowardliness and impolicy of the INToncon- 
formists_, at the Eestoiation^ could have prevented a 
real reformation on a wider basis. But the truth is, 
by going over to Breda with their stiff flatteries to 



50 COLERIDGE^^ TABLE TALK. 

the hollow-hearted King^ they put Sheldon and the 
bishops on the side of the constitution. 



The Reformation in the sixteenth century narrowed 
Eeform. As soon as men began to call themselves 
names^ all hope of further amendment was lost. 



July 23, 1827. 

William HI. — Berkeley, — Spinosa. — Genius. — Envy. — Love. 

TXTILLIAM the Third was a greater and much 

^^ honester man than any of his ministers. I 

believe every one of them^ except Shrewsbury^ has 

now been detected in correspondence with James. 



Berkeley can only be confuted^ or answered^ by one 
sentence. So it is with Spinosa. His premiss granted^ 
the deduction is a chain of adamant. 



Genius may co-exist with wildness^ idleness^ foUjj^ 
even with crime; but not long, believe me^ with 
selfishness, and the indulgence of an envious dispo- 
sition. Envy is kclkkttos kol bcKatoTaTos Oeos^ as I 
once saw it expressed somev/here in a page of Stobaeus : 
it dwarfs and withers its worshippers. 



The matfs desire is for the woman ; but the woman^s 
desire is rarely other than for the desire of the man.* 

* " A woman's friendsliip," I find written by Mr. C. on a page dyed red 
with an imprisoned rose-leaf, " a woman's friendsMp borders more closely on 
love than man's. Men affect each other in the reflection of noble or friendly 
acts; whilst women ask fewer proofs, and more signs and expressions of 
attachment." — Ed. 



JEREMY TAYLOPv. HOOKER. IDEAS. 51 

August 29, 1827. 
Jeremy Taylor. — Hooker. — Ideas. — Knoidedge. 

TEEEMY TAYLOR is an exceUent author for a 
^ youiig man to study^ for tlie pui'pose of imbibing 
noble principles^ and at tlie same time of learning to 
exercise caution and tliouglit in detecting his numer- 
ous errors. 

I must acknoTN^ledge^ with some hesitation^ that I 
think Hooker has been a little over-credited for liis 
judgment. 

Take as an instance of an idea^- the continuity 
and coincident distinctness of nature ; or tliis^ — vege- 
table life is always striving to be something that it is 
not j animal life to be itseK. Hence^ in a plant the 
parts^ as the root^ the stem,, the branches^ leaves^ &c.^ 
remain after they have each produced or contributed 
to produce a different status of the whole plant : in an 

* The reader -^lio lias never studied Plato, Bacon, Kant, or Coleridge in 
their pMlosopMc works, "vrill need to be told that the ^rord Idea is not used 
in this iDassage in the sense adopted by '' Dr. Holofemes, who, in a lecture on 
metaphysics, delivered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes all 
ideas but those of sensation ; whilst his friend, deputy Costard, has no idea 
of a better-flavoured haunch of venison, than he dined off at the London 
Tavern last week. He admits (for the deputy has travelled) that the French 
have an excellent idea of cooking in general: but holds that their most 
accomplished mattres de cuisine have no more idea of dressing a turtle, than 
the Parisian gourmands themselves have any rea^ idea of the true taste and 
colour of the fat." Church and State, p. 78. No ! what Mr. Coleridge meant 
by an idea in this place may be expressed in various ways out of his own 
works. I subjoin a sufficient definition fi'om the Church and State, p. 6. 
" That which, contemplated objectively, (that is, as existing externally to the 
mind,) we call a law ; the same contemplated sudjectively, (that is, as existing 
in a subject or mind,) is an idea. Hence Plato often names Ideas, Laws ; 
and Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes the laws of the material 
universe as the ideas in Nature. '^ Quod in Natura naturata Lex, in natura 
naturante Idea dicitur." A more subtle limitation of the word may be found 
in the last paragraph of Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's 
Manual. — Ed. 

E 2 



52 coleeidge's table talk. 

animal nothing of tlie previous states remains distinct, 
but is incorporated into, and constitutes progressively, 
the very self. 

To know anything for certain is to have a clear 
insight into the inseparability of the predicate from 
the subject (the matter from the form), and vice versa. 
This is a verbal definition, — a real definition of a 
thing absolutely known is impossible. I knotv a 
circle, when I perceive that the equahty of all possible 
radii from the centre to the circumference is insepar- 
able from the idea of a circle. 



August 30, 1827. 
Painting. 

FAINTING is the intermediate somewhat between 
a thought and a thing. 



April 13, 1830. 

Prophecies of the Old Testament. — Messiah. — Jetvs. — The THnity. 

TF the prophecies of the Old Testament are not 
^ rightly interpreted of Jesus our Christ, then there 
is no prediction whatever contained in it of that 
stupendous event — the rise and establishment of 
Christianity — in comparison with which all the pre- 
ceding Jewish history is as nothing. With the 
exception of the book of Daniel, which the Jews 
themselves never classed among the prophecies, and 
an obscure text of Jeremiah, there is not a passage in 
all the Old Testament which favours the notion of a 
temporal Messiah. What moral object was there, 
for w^hich such a Messiah should come? What 
could he have been but a sort of virtuous Sesostris 
or Buonaparte? 



THE TllIXITY. 53 



I know that some excellent men — Israelites with- 
out guile — do not, in fact, expect the advent of any 
Messiah ; but believe, or suggest, that it may possibly 
have been God^s will and meaning, that the Jews 
should remain a quiet light among the nations for the 
purpose of pointing at the doctrine of the unity of 
God. To wliich I say, that this truth of the essen- 
tial unity of God has been preserved, and gloriously 
preached, by Christianity alone. The Eomans never 
shut up their temples, nor ceased to worship a hun- 
dred or a thousand gods and goddesses, at the bidding 
of the Jews ; the Persians, the Hindus, the Chinese, 
learned notliing of this great truth from the Jews. 
But from Chiistians they did learn it in various 
degrees, and are still learning it. The religion of the 
Jews is, indeed, a hght ; but it is as the light of the 
glow-worm, which gives no heat, and illumines nothing 
but itself. 

It has been objected to me, that the vulgar notions 
of the Ti'inity are at variance with this doctrine ; and 
it was added, whether as flattery or sarcasm matters 
not, that few believers in the Trinity thought of it as 
I did. To which again humbly, yet confidently, I 
reply, that my superior light, if superior, consists in 
nothing more than tliis, — ^that I more clearly see that 
the doctrine of Trinal Unity is an absolute truth 
transcending my himian means of understanding it, 
or demonstrating it. I may or may not be able to 
utter the formula of my faith in this mystery in more 
logical terms than some others ; but tins I say. Go 
and ask the most ordinary man, a professed believer 
in this doctrine, whether he beheves in and worships 



54 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

a plurality of Gods^ and lie will start with horror at 
the bare suggestion. He may not be able to explain 
his creed in exact terms ; but he will tell you that 
he does believe in one God_, and in one God only^ — 
reason about it as you may. 

"What all the churches of the East and West^ what 
Eomanist and Protestant believe in common, that I 
call Gliristianity. In no proper sense of the word can 
I call Unitarians and Socinians behevers in Christ ; at 
leastv, not in the only Christ of whom I have read or 
know any thing. 



April 14, 1830. 
Conversion of the Jeivs. — Jews in Poland. 

T^HERE is no hope of converting the Jews in the 
-*- way and with the spirit unhappily adopted by our 
church j and, indeed, by all other modern churches. 
In the first age, the Jewish Christians undoubtedly 
considered themselves as the seed of Abraham, to 
whom the promise had been made ; and, as such, a 
superior order. "Witness the account of St. Peter^'s 
conduct in the Acts,"^ and the Epistle to the Gala- 
tians.t St. Paul protested against this, so far as it 
went to make Jewish observances compulsory on 
Christians who were not of Jewish blood, and so far 
as it in any way led to bottom the religion on the 
Mosaic covenant of works ; but he never denied the 
birthright of the chosen seed : on the contrary, he 
himself evidently believed that the Jews would ulti- 
mately be restored; and he says, — If the Gentiles 
have been so blest by the rejection of the Jews, how 

* Chap. XV. t Chap. ii. 



JEWS IX POLAND. 55 

much rather shall they be blest by the conversion and 
restoration of Israel ! AYhy do we expect the Jews 
to abandon their national customs and distinctions ? 
The Abyssinian chiu'ch said that they claimed a 
descent from Abraham ; and that^ in \'irtue of such 
ancestry^ they observed circumcision : but declaring 
withal, that they rejected the covenant of works^ and 
rested on the promise fulfilled in Jesus Chiist. In 
consequence of this appeal, the Abyssinians were 
permitted to retain theii' customs. 

If Ehenferd^s Essays were translated — if the Jews 
were made acquainted T^ith the real ai'gument — if 
they were addressed kindly, and were not required to 
abandon their distinctive customs and national type, 
but were invited to become Christians as of the seed 
of Abraham — I beheve there would be a Christian 
synagogue in a yearns time. As it is, the Jews of 
the lower orders are the very lowest of mankind; 
they have not a principle of honesty in them ; to grasp 
and be ^ettaisr monev for ever is their sinaie and ex- 
elusive occupation. A learned Jew once said to me, 
upon this subject : — ^^ Sir ! make the inhabitants of 
HolyweU Street and Duke^s Place Israelites fii'st, and 
then we mav debate about makino^ them Chiistians.''^'^ 



In Poland, the Jews are gTeat landholders, and are 
the worst of tyrants. They have no kind of sympathy 
with their laboiu^ers and dependants. They never 
meet them in common worship. Land, in the hand 

* Mr. Coleridge had a very friendly acquaintance -vrith several learned 
Je^rs in tMs country, and lie told me that, -vrhenever lie liad fallen in with. 
. a Je'sr of thorough education and literary habits, he had al"srays found him 
possessed of a strong natural capacity for metaphysical disquisitions. I may 
mention here the best kno^sm of his Jewish friends, one whom he deeply 
respected, Hyman Hurwitz. — Ed. 



56 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of a large number of Jews^ instead of beings what it 
ought to be^ the organ of permanence, would become 
the organ of rigidity, in a nation; by their inter- 
marriages within their own pale, it would be, in fact, 
perpetually entailed. Then, again, if a popular 
tumult were to take place in Poland, who can doubt 
that the Jews would be the first objects of murder 
and spoliation ? 



April 17, 1830. 
Mosaic Miracles, — Pantheism. 

TlSr the miracles of Moses, there is a remarkable 
-*- intermingling of acts, which we should now-a-days 
call simply providential, with such as we should still 
call miraculous. The passing of the Jordan, in the 
3rd chapter of the book of Joshua, is perhaps the 
purest and sheerest miracle recorded in the Bible ; it 
seems to have been wrought for the miracle^s sake, 
and so thereby to show to the Jews — the descendants 
of those who had come out of Egypt — that the same 
God who had appeared to their fathers, and who had by 
miracles, in many respects providential only, preserved 
them in the wilderness, was their God also. The 
manna and quails were ordinary provisions of Pro- 
vidence, rendered miraculous by certain laws and 
qualities annexed to them in the particular instance. 
The passage of the Red Sea was effected by a strong 
wind, which, we are told, drove back the waters ; and 
so on. But then, again, the death of the first-born 
was purely miraculous. Hence, then, both Jews and 
Egyptians might take occasion to learn, that it was 
one and the same God who interfered specially, and 
who governed aU generally. 



POETIC prvo:\risE. 57 

Take away the first verse of the book of Genesis^ 
aud then what immediately follows is an exact liistory 
or sketch of Pantheism. Pantheism was taught in 
the mysteries of Greece ; of wliicli the Samotln^acian 
or Cabeuio were probably the purest and the most 
ancient. 



April 18, 1830. 
Poetic Promise. 

TN the present age it is next to impossible to predict 
-■- from specimens^ however favourable^ that a young 
man will turn out a great poet^ or father a poet at all. 
Poetic taste^ dexterity in composition^ and ingenious 
imitation^ often produce poems that are very promis- 
ing in appearance. But genius^ or the power of doing 
something new^ is another thing. Mr. Tennyson^ s 
sonnets^ such as I have seen^ have many of the cha- 
racteristic excellencies of those of Wordsworth and 
Southey. 

April 19, 1830. 

IT is a small thing that the patient knows of his 
own state; yet some tilings he does know better 
than his physician. 

I never had^ and never could feel^ any hon^or at 
death, simply as death. 

Good and bad men are each less so than thev seem. 



April 30, 1830. 
Nominalists and Realists. — British Schoolmen. — Spinosa. 

TT^HE result of my system will be^ to show, that, so 
-L far from the world being a goddess in petticoats, 
it is rather the Devil in a strait waistcoat. 



58 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

The controversy of the Nominahsts and Realists 
was one of the greatest and most important that ever 
occupied the human mind. They were both rights 
and both wrong. They each maintained opposite 
poles of the same truth ; which truth neither of them 
saw^ for T\'ant of a higher premiss. Duns Scotus was 
the head of the EeaUsts : Ockham^* his own disciple, 
of the NominaUsts. Ockham, though certainly very 
prolix, is a most extraordinary writer, 

* John Duns Scotus was bom in 1274, at Dunstone in the parish of 
Emildune, near Alnwick. He was a fellow of Merton College, and Professor 
of Divinity at Oxford. After acquiring an uncommon reputation at his own 
university, he went to Paris, and thence to Cologne, and there died in 1308, 
at the early age of thirty-four years. He was called the Subtle Doctor, and 
found time to compose works which now fill twelve volumes in folio. See the 
Lyons edition, by Luke "Wadding, in 1639. 

W^illiam Ockham was an Englishman, and died about 1347 ; but the place 
and year of his birth are not clearly ascertained. He was styled the Invin- 
cible Doctor, and wrote bitterly against Pope John XXII. We all remember 
Butler's account of these worthies : — 

^' He knew what's what, and that's as high 

As metaphysic wit can fly; 

In school divinity as able 

As he that hight Irrefragable, 

A second Thomas, or at once 

To name them all, another Dunse ; 

Profound in all the Nominal 

And Real ways beyond them all ; 

For he a rope of sand could twist 

As tough as learned Sorbonist," 

HuDiBEAS. Part I. Canto I. v. 149. 
The Irrefragable Doctor was Alexander Hales, a native of Gloucestershire, 
who died in 1245. Amongst his pupils, at Paris, was Fidanza, better known 
by the name of Bonaventura, the Seraphic Doctor. The controversy of the 
Eealists and the Nominalists cannot be explained in a note ; but in substance 
the original point of dispute may be thus stated. The Eealists held generally 
with Aristotle, that there were universal ideas or essences impressed upon 
matter, or coeval with, and inherent in, their objects. Plato held that these 
universal forms existed as exemplars in the divine mind previously to, and 
independently of, matter ; but both maintained, under one shape or other, 
the real existence of universal forms. On the other hand, Zeno and the old 
Stoics denied the existence of these universals, and contended that they were 
no more than mere terms and nominal representatives of their particular 
objects. The Nominalists were the followers of Zeno, and held that 
imiversal forms are merely modes of conception, and exist solely in and for 
the mind. It does not require much reflection to see how great an influence 
these different systems might have upon the enunciation of the higher 
doctrines of Christianity. — Ed. 



BRITISH SCHOOLMEN. 59 

It is remarkable^ that two-tliirds of the eminent 
schoolmen were of British birth. It was the school- 
men who made the languages of Europe what they 
now are. We laugh at the quiddities of those writers 
now^ but^ in truths these quiddities are just the parts 
of their language wliich we have rejected; whilst we 
never think: of the mass which we have adopted,, and 
have in daily use. 

One of the scholastic definitions of God is this^ — 
Deus est, cid omne quod est est esse omne qiiod est : as 
long a sentence made up of as few words^ and those 
as oligosyllabic^ as any I remember. By the by^ that 
oligosyllaUc is a word happily illustrative of its own 
meaning, ex opjjosito. 

Spinosa, at tlie very end of liis Hfe, seems to have 
gained a glimpse of the truth. In the last letter 
pubKshed in his works, it appears that h.e began to 
suspect his premiss. His tmica substantia is, in fact, a 
mere notion, — a subject of the mind, and no object at all. 

Plato^s works are preparatory exercises for the 
mind. He leads you to see, that propositions in- 
volving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are 
nevertheless true ; and which, therefore, must belong 
to a liigher logic — that of ideas. They are contra- 
dictory only in the Aristotelian logic, Avhicli is the 
instrument of the understanding. I have read most 
of the works of Plato several times with profound 
attention, but not aU his writings. In fact, I soon 
found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was 
a consummate genius.^ 

* " This is the test and character of a tnith so afi&rmed ( — a truth of the 
reason, an Idea) — that in its o^v^n proper form it is inconceivaole. For to 
conceive, is a function of the understanding, which can be exercised only on 



60 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Mj mind is in a state of philosopliical doubt as to 
animal magnetism. Yon Spix, the eminent naturalist^ 
makes no doubt of tlie matter^ and talks coolly of 
giving doses of it. Tlie torpedo affects a third or 
external object^ by an exertion of its own will : sucb 
a power is not properly electrical ; for electricity acts 
invariably under tbe same circumstances. A steady 
gaze will make many persons of fair complexion blush 
deeply. Account for that.* 

subjects subordinate thereto. And yet to the forms of tbe understanding all 
truth must be reduced, that is to be fixed as an object of reflection, and to be 
rendered expressible. And here we have a second test and sign of a truth so 
affirmed, that it can come forth out of the moulds of the understanding only 
in the disguise of t-^ro contradictory conceptions, each of which is partially 
true, and the conjunction of both conceptions becomes the representative 
or expression ( — the exponent) of a truth beyond conception and inexpressible. 
Examples : before Abraham was, i am. God is a circle, the centre of "^rhich 
is every where, and the circumference no where. The soul is all in every 
part." Aids to Eeflection, p. 224, n. See also Church and State, p. 12. — Ed. 

* I find the following remarkable passage in p. 301, vol. i., of the richly 
annotated copy of Mr. Southey's Life of Wesley, which Mr. C. bequeathed 
as his " darling book and the favourite of his library " to its great and 
honoured author and donor : — 

" The coincidence throughout of all these Methodist cases with those of the 
Magnetists makes me wish for a solution that would apply to all. Now this 
sense or appearance of a sense of the distant, both in time and space, is 
common to almost all the magnetic patients in Denmark, Germany, France, 
and North Italy, to many of whom the same or a similar solution could not 
apply. Likewise, many cases have been recorded at the same time, in 
different countries, by men who had never heard of each other's names, 
and where- the simultaneity of publication proves the independence of the 
testimony. And among the Magnetisers and Attesters are to be found 
names of men, whose competence in respect of integrity and incapability of 
intentional falsehood is fully equal to that of Wesley, and their competence 
in respect of physio- and psycho-logical insight and attainments incomparably 
greater. WTio would dream, indeed, of comparing Wesley "u-ith a Cuvier, 
Hufeland, Blumenbach, Eschenmeyer, Eeil, &c. ? Were I asked, what /think, 
my answer would be, — that the evidence enforces scepticism and a non liquet; — 
too strong and consentaneous for a candid mind to be satisfied of its false- 
hood, or its solvibility on the supposition of imposture or casual coincidence ; 
— too fugacious and unfixable to support any theory that supposes the always 
potential, and, imder certain conditions and circumstances, occasionally 
active, existence of a correspondent faculty in the human soul. And nothing 
less than such an hypothesis would be adequate to the satisfactory explanation 
of the facts ; — though that of a metastasis of specific functions of the nervous 
energy, taken in conjunction with extreme nervous excitement, plus some 
delusion, plus some illusion, plus some imposition, plus some chance and 



MADNESS. 61 



May 1, 1830. 
Fall of Man. — Madness. — Brown and Dai^in. — Nitroibs Oxide, 

A FALL of some sort or other — the creation^ as 
it were^ of the non-absolute — is the fundamental 
postulate of the moral history of Man. Without this 
hypothesis^ Man is unintelligible ; with it^ every phe- 
nomenon is exphcable. The mysterj^ itself is too 
profound for human insight. 

Madness is not simply a bodily disease. It is the 
sleep of the spirit with certain conditions of wakeful- 
ness; that is to say^ lucid intervals. Dming this 
sleep^ or recession of the spirit^ the lower or bestial 
states of life rise up into action and prominence. It 
is an awful tiling to be eternally tempted by the per- 
verted senses. The reason may resist — ^it does resist 
— for a long time ; but too often^ at lengthy it yields 
for a moment^ and the man is mad for ever. An act 
of the will is^ in many instances_, precedent to com- 
plete insanity. I think it was Bishop Butler who 
said^ that he was all his life struggling against the 
de\alish suggestions of liis senses^ which would have 
maddened him^ if he had relaxed the stern wakefulness 
of his reason for a single moment. 

accidental coincidence, might determine the direction in wMch the scepticism 
should vibrate. Nine years has the subject of Zoo-raagnetism been before 
me. I have traced it historically, collected a mass of documents in French, 
German, Italian, and the Latinists of the sixteenth century, have never 
neglected an opportunity of questioning eye-witnesses, eo:. gr. Tieck, Trevi- 
ranus, De Prati, Meyer, and others of literary or medical celebrity, and I 
remain where I was, and where the first perusal of King's works had left me, 
without having moved an inch backward or forward. The reply of Trevi- 
ranus, the famous botanist, to me, when he was in London, is worth 
recording : — ' Ich habe gesehen was (ich weiss das) ich nicht wiirde geglaubt 
haben auf ifiren erziihlung,' &c. ' I have seen what I am certain I would not 
have believed on your telling ; and in all reason, therefore, I can neither 
expect nor wish that you should believe on mine' '" — Ed. 



62 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Brown and Darwin^s theories are both mgenious ; 
but the first will not accoimt for sleep^ and the last 
will not account for death : considerable defects^ you 
must allow. 

It is said that every excitation is followed by a 
commensurate exhaustion. That is not so. The 
excitation caused by inhaling nitrous oxide is an 
exception at least; it leaves no exhaustion on the 
bursting of the bubble. The operation of tliis gas 
is to prevent the decarbonating of the blood; and, 
consequently, if taken excessively, it would produce 
apoplexy. The blood becomes black as ink. The 
voluptuous sensation attending the inhalation is pro- 
duced by the compression and resistance. 



May 2, 1830. 
Plants. — Insects. — Men. — Dog. — Ant and Bee. 

PLANTS exist in themselves. Insects hy, or by 
means of, themselves. Men, for themselves. 
The perfection of irrational animals is that which is 
best for them ; the perfection of man is that which is 
absolutely best. There is growth only in plants ; but 
there is irritability, or, a better word, instincti^dty, 
in insects. 

You may understand by insect, life in sections — 
diffused generally over all the parts. 

The dog alone, of all brute animals, has a a-ropyr], 
or affection upwards to man. 



The ant and the bee are, I tliink, much nearer man 



HOLLAND AND THE DUTCH. 63 

in the understanding or faculty of adapting means to 
proximate ends than the elephant.* 



w 



May 3, 1830. 

Black Colonel. 

HxiT an excellent character is the black Colonel 
in Mrs. Bennett's '' Bes^o^ar Giii '/' t 



If an inscription be put upon my tomb^ it may be 
that I was an enthusiastic lover of the chm'ch ; and 
as enthusiastic a hater of those who have betrayed it^ 
be they who they may.J 



May 4, 1830. 
Holland and the Dutch. 

TTOLLAND and the jNTetherlands ought to be seen 
-^-^ once^ because no other country is hke them. 
Everything is artificial. You will be struct with 
the combinations of vi\dd greenery^ and watei% and 
building; but everything is so distinct and remem- 
berable^ that you would not improve your conception 
by visiting the country a hundred times over. It is 
interesting to see a country and a nature made, 

* I remember Mr. C. "was accustomed to consider the ant as the most 
intellectnal, and the dog as the most affectionate, of the irrational creatures, 
so far as our present acquaintance vith the facts of natural history enables 
us to judge. — Ed. 

t This character -was frequently a subject of pleasant description and 
enlargement "vrith Mr. Coleridge, and he generally passed from it to a high 
commendation of Miss Austen's novels, as being in their way perfectly 
genuine and individual productions. — Ed. 

t This was a strong way of expressing a deep-rooted feeling. A better 
and a tmer character would be, that Coleridge was a lover of the church, 
and a defender of the faith! This last expression is the utterance of a 
conviction so profound that it can patiently wait for time to prove its 
truth.— Ed. 



64 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

as it were^ by man^ and to compare it with God's 
nature,* 

If you go^ remark (indeed you will be forced to do 
so in spite of yourself)^ remark^ I say,, the identity 
(for it is more than proximity) of a disgusting dirti- 
ness in all that concerns the dignity of^ and reverence 
for^ the human person; and a persecuting painted 
cleanliness in everything connected with property. 
You must not walk in their gardens ; nay^ you must 
hardly look into them. 

The Dutch seem very happy and comfortable^ cer- 
tainly j but it is the happiness of animals. In vain 
do you look for the sweet breath of hope and advance- 
ment among them. t 

In fact^ as to their villas and gardens^ they are not 
to be compared to an ordinary London merchant's box. 



May 5, 1830. 

Religion gentilises. — Women and Men. — Biblical Commentators. — 

Walkerite Creed, 

XrOU may depend upon it^ religion is^ in its essence;, 
-■- the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It 
wiU alone gentilise^ if unmixed with cant; and I 
know nothing else that will^ alone. Certainly not 
the army^ which is thought to be the grand embel- 
lisher of manners. 

* In the Slimmer of 1828, Mr. Coleridge made an excursion with 
Mr. Wordsworth in Holland, Flanders, and up the Ehine, as far as Bergen. 
He came back delighted, especially with his stay near Bonn, hut with an 
abiding disgust at the filthy habits of the people. Upon Cologne, in 
particular, he avenged himself in two epigrams. See Poet. Works, vol. ii., 
p. 144.— Ed. 

t " For every gift of noble origin 

Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 

Wordsworth. 



HORNE TOOKE. 65 

A woman's head is usually over ears in her heart. 
Man seems to have been designed for the superior 
being of the two ; but as things are, I tliink women 
are generally better creatures than men. They have, 
taken universally, weaker appetites and weaker intel- 
lects, but they have much stronger affections. A man 
with a bad heart has been sometimes saved by a strong 
head ; but a corrupt woman is lost for ever. 

I never could get much information out of the 
bibhcal commentators. Cocceius has told me the 
most j but he, and all of them, have a notable trick 
of passing siccissimis pedibtis over the parts which 
puzzle a man of reflection. 

The "Walkerite creed, or doctrine of the New 
Church, as it is called, appears to be a miscellany of 
Calvinism and Quakerism ; but it is hard to under- 
stand it. 



May 7, 1830. 

Home TooTce. — Diversions of Purley. — Gender of the Sun in 

German. 

HOENE TOOKE was pre-eminently a ready-witted 
man. He had that clearness which is founded 
on shallowness. He doubted nothing; and, therefore, 
gave you all that he himseH knew, or meant, with 
great completeness. His voice was very fine, and his 
tones exquisitely discriminating. His mind had no 
progression or development. All that is worth any- 
thing (and that is but little) in the Diversions of 
Purley is contained in a short pamphlet-letter which 
he addressed to Mr. Dunning ; then it was enlarged 
to an octavo, but there was not a foot of progression 



6.6 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

beyond the pamphlet; at last, a quarto volume, I 
believe, came out; and yet, verily, excepting news- 
paper lampoons and political insinuations, there was 
no addition to the argument of the pamphlet. It 
shows a base and unpoetical mind to convert so beau- 
tiful, so divine, a subject as language into the veliicle 
or make-weight of political squibs. AR that is true 
in Home Tooke^s book is taken from Lennep, who 
gave it for so much as it was worth, and never pre- 
tended to make a system of it. Tooke affects to 
explain the origin and whole philosophy of language 
by what is, in fact, only a mere accident of the history 
of one language, or one or two languages. His abuse 
of Harris is most shallow and unfair. Harris, in the 
Hermes, was dealing — not very profoundly, it is true, 
— with the philosophy of language, the moral, physical, 
and metaphysical causes and conditions of it, &c. 
Home Tooke, in TSTiting about the formation of words 
only, thought he was explaining the pliilosophy of 
language, which is a very different thing. In point 
of fact, he was very shallow in the Gothic dialects. 
I must say, aU that decantata fabida -about the gen- 
ders of the sun and moon in German seems to me 
great stuff. Originally, I apprehend, in the Piatt- 
Deutsch of the north of Germany there were only two 
definite articles — die for masculine and feminine, and 
das for neuter. Then it was die sonne, in a masculine 
sense, as we say with the same word as article, tJie 
sun. Luther, in constructing the Hoch-Deutsch (for 
really his miraculous and providential translation of 
the Bible was the fundamental act of construction of 
the hterary German), took for his distinct masculine 
article the der of the Ober-Leutsch, and thus consti- 



HORNE TOOKE. 67 



tuted the tlu'ee articles of the present High German, 
der, die, das. Naturally, therefore, it would then have 
been, der sonne ; but here the analogy of the Greek 
grammar prevailed, and as somie had the arbitrary 
feminine termination of the Greek, it was left with its 
old article die, wliich, originally including masculine 
and feminine both, had grown to designate the feminine 
only. To the best of my recollection, the Minnesingers 
and all the old poets always use the sun as masculine ; 
and, since Luther^s time, the poets feel the awkward- 
ness of the classical gender affixed to the sun so much, 
that they more commonly introduce Phoebus or some 
other sjTionyme instead. I must acknowledge my 
doubts, whether, upon more accurate investigation, it 
can be shown that there ever was a nation that con- 
sidered the sun in itself, and apart fi'om language, as 
the feminine power. The moon does not so clearly 
demand a feminine as the sun does a masculine sex : 
it might be considered negatively or neuter ; — ^yet if 
the reception of its light from the sun were known, 
that would have been a good reason for making her 
feminine, as being the recipient body. 



As our tke was the German die, so I believe our 
t/iat stood for das, and was used as a neuter definite 
article. 

The Tlatt-Dentscli was a compact language like the 
English, not admitting much agglutination. The Oler- 
Beutsch was fuller and fonder of agglutinating words 
together, although it was not so soft in its sounds. 



f2 



68 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

May 8, 1830. 
Home Tooke. — Jacobins. 

HOENE TOOKE said that his friends might, if 
they pleased, go as far as Slough, — he should go 
no farther than Hounslow ; but that was no reason why- 
he should not keep them company so far as their roads 
were the same. The answer is easy. Suppose you 
know, or suspect, that a man is about to commit a 
robbery at Slough, though you do not mean to be liis 
accomplice, have you a moral right to walk arm in 
arm with him to Hounslow, and, by thus giving liim 
your countenance, prevent his being taken up ? The 
history of all the world tells us, that immoral means 
will ever intercept good ends. 

Enlist the interests of stern morahty and religious 
enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the 
time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible ; 
but the Jacobins played the whole game of religion, 
and morals, and domestic happiness into the hands 
of the aristocrats. Thank God ! that they did so. 
England was saved from civil war by their enormous, 
their providential, blundering. 

Can a politician, a statesman, slight the feelings 
and the convictions of the whole matronage of his 
country ? The women are as influential upon such 
national interests as the men. 



Home Tooke was always making a butt of Mr. 
Godwin; who, nevertheless, had that in him which 
Tooke could never have understood. I saw a good 
deal of Tooke at one time : he left upon me the 
impression of his being a keen, iron man. 



MILESIAN TALES. 69 

May 9, 1830. 
Persian and Arabic Poetry. — Milesian Tales, 

I MUST acknowledge I never could see much merit 
in the Persian poetry^ which I have read in 
translation. There is not a ray of imagination in it^ 
and but a ghmmering of fancy. It is^ in fact, so far 
as I know, deficient in truth. Poetry is certainly 
something more than good sense, but it must be good 
sense, at all events ; just as a palace is more than a 
house, but it must be a house, at least. The Arabian 
Nights^ Tales are a different thing — they are dehght- 
ful, but I cannot help surmising that there is a good 
deal of Greek fancy in them. jN; o doubt we have had 
a great loss in the Milesian Tales.* The book of Job is 
pure Arab poetry of the liighest and most antique cast. 

Think of the subUmity, I should rather say the 
profundity^ of that passage in Ezekiel,f ^''Son of 

* The Milesiacs were so called, because Trritten or composed by Aristides 
of Miletus, and also because the scene of all or most of them was placed in 
that rich and luxurious city. Hai-pocration cites the sixth book of this 
collection. Nothing, I believe, is now knoTm of the age or history of this 
Aristides, except what may be inferred from the fact that Lucius Cornelius 
Sisenna translated the tales into Latin, as we learn from Ovid : — 

Junxit Aristides 3Iilesia crimina secmn — 
and afterwards, 

Vertit Aristidem Sisenna, nee obfuit ill! 
HistorisB turpes inseruisse jocos : — 

Fasti, ii. 412—443. 
and also from the incident mentioned in the Plutarc?dan life of Crassus, that 
after the defeat at Carrhse, a copy of the Milesiacs of Aristides was found in 
the baggage of a Roman officer, and that Surena (who, by the by, if history 
has not done him injustice, was not a man to be over scrupulous in such a 
case,) caused the book to be brought into the senate house of Seleucia, and a 
portion of it read aloud, for the purpose of insulting the Romans, who, even 
during war, he said, could not abstain from the perusal of such infamous 
compositions, — c. 32. The immoral character of these tales, therefore, may 
,be considered pretty clearly established; they were the Decameron and 
Heptameron of antiquity. — Ed. 

t Chap, xxxvii. v. 3. 



70 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

man^ can these bones live? And I answered^ 
Lord God^ tliou knowest/^ I know nothing hke it. 



May 11, 1830. 
Sir T. Monro. — Sir S. Raffles. — Canning, 

SIE THOMAS MONEO and Sir Stamford Eaffles 
were both great men; but I recognise more 
genius in the latter^ though^ I believe^ the world says 
otherwise. 

I never found what I call an idea in anj speech or 
writing of ^^s. Those enormously prohx ha- 
rangues are a proof of weakness in the liigher intel- 
lectual grasp. Canning had a sense of the beautiful 

and the good; rarely speaks but to abuse, 

detract, and degrade. I confine myself to institutions, 
of course, and do not mean personal detraction. In 
my judgment, no man can rightly apprehend an abuse 
till he has first mastered the idea of the use of an 
institution. How fine, for example, is the idea of the 
unhired magistracy of England, taking in and hnking 
together the duke to the country gentleman in the 
primary distribution of justice, or in the preservation 
of order and execution of law at least throughout the 
country ! Yet some men never seem to have thought 
of it for one moment, but as connected with brewers, 
and barristers, and tyrannical Squire "Westerns ! Trom 
what I saw of Horner, I thought bim a superior man, 
in real intellectual greatness. 

Canning flashed such a light around the constitu- 
tion, that it was dif&cult to see the ruins of the fabric 
tlirough it. 



SHAKSPEAEE. — MILTON. IIO:\rER. 7 1 

May 12, 1830. 
Shakspeare. — Milton. — Homer. 

O HAKSPEAEE is the Spinosistic deity— an omm- 
^ present creativeness. Milton is the deity of 
prescience; he stands ah extra, and diives a fiery 
chariot and four^ making the horses feel the iron curb 
which holds them in. Shakspeare^s poetry is cha- 
racterless; that is^ it does not reflect the indiddual 
Shakspeare ; bnt John Milton himseK is in every line 
of the Paradise Lost. Shakspeare^s rhymed verses 
are excessively condensed^ — epigrams ^th the point 
everywhere; but in his blank dramatic verse he is 
diffused^ with a linked sweetness long di'awn out. No 
one can understand Shakspeare^ s superiority fully 
until he has ascertained^ by comparison^ all that 
which he possessed in common with several other 
great dramatists of his age^ and has then calculated 
the surplus which is entirely Shakspeare^ s own. His 
rhythm is so perfect^ that you may be almost sure 
that you do not understand the real force of a line^ if 
it does not run well as you read it. The necessary 
mental pause after every hemistich or imperfect line 
is always equal to the time that would have been 
taken in reading the complete verse. 

I have no doubt whatever that Homer is a mere 
concrete name for the rhapsodies of the Iliad.* Of 
course there was a Homer^ and twenty besides. I 

* Mr. Coleridge -^as a decided Wolnan in the Homeric question ; but he 
had never read a ^rord of the famous Prolegomena, and knew nothing of 
Wolfs reasoning, but what I told him of it in conversation. Mr. C. informed 
me, that he adopted the conclusion contained in the text upon the first 
perusal of Vico's Scienza Xuova ; '''not," he said, "thatVico has reasoned 
it out with such learning and accuracy as you report of W^olf, but Vico 
struck out all the leading hints, and I soon filled up the rest out of my own 
head." — Ed. 



72 COLEHIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 

wall engage to compile twelve books with characters 
just as distinct and consistent as those in the Iliad^ 
from the metrical ballads, and other chronicles of 
England, about Arthur and the Knights of the Round 
Table. I say nothing about moral dignity, but the 
mere consistency of character. The different qualities 
were traditional. Tristram is always courteous, 
Lancelot invincible, and so on. The same might be 
done with the Spanish romances of the Cid. There is 
no subjectivity whatever in the Homeric poetry. There 
is a subjectivity of the poet, as of Milton, who is him- 
self before liimseK in everji:hing he writes; and there is 
a subjectivity of the persona^ or dramatic character, as 
in all Shakspeare^'s great creations, Hamlet, Lear, &c. 



May 14, 1830. 
Reason and Understanding. — Words and Names of Things, 

UNTIL you have mastered the fundamental dif- 
ference, in kind, between the reason and the 
understanding as faculties of the human mind, you 
cannot escape a thousand difficulties in philosophy. 
It is pre-eminently the Gradtis ad Philosophiam, 

The general harmony between the operations of 
the mind and heart, and the words which express 
them in almost all languages, is wonderful; whilst 
the endless discrepancies between the names of tilings 
is very well deserving notice. There are nearly a 
hundred names in the different German dialects for 
the alder-tree. I believe many more remarkable in- 
stances are to be found in Arabic. Indeed, you may 
take a very pregnant and useful distinction between 
words and mere arbitrary names of things. 



ABrvAIIAM. — ISAAC. 73 

May 15, 1830. 
The Tnnity. — Irving. 

T^HE Tiinity is,— 1. the ATiU; 2. tlie Eeason, or 
-■- Word; 3. tlie Love, or Life. As we distinguish 
these three, so we iQust unite them in one God. The 
union must be as transcendant as the distinction. 

Mr. L'\-ing^s notion is tritheism, — nay, rather in 
terms, tri-daemonism. His opinion about the sinful- 
ness of the humanity of oiu' Lord is absui'd, if con- 
sidered in one point of ^^iew ; for body is not carcass. 
How can there be a sinful carcass ? But what he 
says is capable of a sounder interpretation. L'™g 
caught many things from me ; but he would never 
attend to anything wliich he thought he could not 
use in the pulpit. I told liim the certain consequence 
would be, that he would fall into grievous errors. 
Sometimes he has five or six pages together of the 
pui'est eloquence, and then an outbreak of almost 
madman's babble,^ 



May 16, 1830. 
Abraham. — Isaac. — Jacob. 

TTOTT wonderfully beautiful is the dehneation of 
-^ J- the characters of the three patriarchs in Genesis ! 
To be sure, if ever man could, without impropriety, 
be called, or supposed to be, ''^the friend of God,"^ 
Abraham was that man. ATe are not surprised that 
Abimelech and Epln'on seem to reverence Mm so 

* The admiration and sympathy T^-hich Mr. Coleridge felt and expressed 
towards the late Mr. Irving, at his first appearance in London, were great 
and sincere; and his grief at the deplorable change which followed was in 
proportion. But, long after the tongues shall have failed and been forgotten, 
Irving's name will live in the splendid eulogies of his friend. See Church 
and State, p. 180, n.— Ed. 



74 COLEUTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

profoundly. He was peaceful, because of his con- 
scious relation to God ; in other respects, he stakes 
fire, like an Arab sheikh, at the injuries suffered by 
Lot, and goes to war with the combined kinglings 
immediately. 

Isaac is, as it were, a faint shadow of his father 
Abraham. Born in possession of the pcrwer and 
wealth which his father had acquired, he is always 
peaceful and meditative ; and it is curious to observe 
his timid and almost childish imitation of Abraham'^s 
stratagem about his wife.*' Isaac does it beforehand, 
and without any apparent necessity. 

Jacob is a regular Jew, and practises aU sorts of 
tricks and wiles, which, according to our modern 
notions of honour, we cannot approve. But you will 
observe that all these tricks are confined to matters 
of prudential arrangement, to worldly success and 
prosperity (for such, in fact, was the essence of the 
birtliright) ; and I think we must not exact from men 
of an imperfectly civilized age the same conduct as to 
mere temporal and bodily abstinence which we have 
a right to demand from Christians. Jacob is always 
careful not to commit any violence ; he shudders at 
bloodshed. See his demeanour after the vengeance 
taken on the Schechemites.f He is the exact com- 
pound of the timidity and gentleness of Isaac, and of 
the underhand craftiness of his mother Rebecca. No 
man could be a bad man who loved as he loved 
Eachel. I dare say Laban thought none the worse 
of Jacob for his plan of making the ewes bring forth 
ring-streaked lambs. 

* Gen. xxvi. 6. f Gen. xxxiv. 



GRAMMAR SCHOOLS. 75 

May 17, 1830. 
Origin of Acts. — Love, 

IF a man^s conduct cannot be ascribed to the angelic^ 
nor to the bestial witliin liim^ what is there left 
for us to refer it to_, but the fiendish ? Passion with- 
out any appetite is fiendish. 



Tlie best way to bring a clever young man_, who has 
become sceptical and unsettled^ to reason^ is to make 
lYHnfeel sometliing in any way. Love_, if sincere and 
unworldly^ will^ in nine instances out of ten^ bring 
him to a sense and assurance of something real and 
actual ; and that sense alone will make liim think to a 
sound purpose^ instead of dreaming that he is thinking. 



^' Never marry but for love/^ says TTiUiam Penn 
in his Eeflexions and Maxims j ^^ but see that thou 
lovest what is lovely."*^ 



May 18, 1830. 
Lord Eldoti's Doctrine as to Grammar Schools, — Democracy, 

T OED ELDOX^S doctrine,, that grammar-schools^ 
-■-^ in the sense of the reign of Edward VI. and 
Queen Elizabeth^ must necessarily mean schools for 
teacliing Latin and Greeks is^ I think^ founded on an 
insufficient knowledge of the history and literature of 
the sixteenth century. Ben Jonson uses the term 
^^ grammar ^^ without any reference to the learned 
languages. 

It is intolerable when men^ who have no other 
knowledge^ have not even a competent understanding 
of that world in which they are always livings and to 
which they refer everjihing. 



76 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Although contemporary events obscure past events 
in a living man^s Hfe, yet as soon as he is dead^ and 
his whole life is a matter of history^ one action stands 
out as conspicuously as another. 



A democracy, according to the prescript of pure 
reason, would, in fact, be a church. There would be 
focal points in it, but no superior. 



May 20, 1830. 

The Eucharist. — St. John, xix. 1 J . — Genuineness of BooTcs of Moses. 
— Divinity of Christ. — Mosaic Prophecies. 

"VrO doubt, Chrysostom, and the other rhetorical 
-L^ fathers, contributed a good deal, by their rash 
use of figurative language, to advance the superstitious 
notion of the eucharist;^^ but the beginning had been 
much earlier. In Clement, indeed, the mystery is 
treated as it was treated by Saint John and Saint 
Paul ; but in Hermas we see the seeds of the error, 
and more clearly in Irenseus ; and so it went on till 
the idea was changed into an idol. 



The errors of the Sacramentaries, on the one hand, 
and of the Romanists on the other, are equally great. 
The first have volatilized the eucharist into a meta- 
phor ; the last have condensed it into an idol. 

Jeremy Taylor, in his zeal against transubstantiation, 
contends that the latter part of the sixth chapter of 
St. John^s Gospel has no reference to the eucharist. 
If so, St. John wholly passes over this sacred mystery; 

* Mr. Coleridge made these remarks upon my quoting Selden's -well-known 
saying (Table Talk), "that transubstantiation was nothing but rhetoric 
turned into logic." — Ed. 



MEANI^^G OF A PASSAGE IN ST. JOHN. 77 

for he does not include it in his notice of the 
last supper. Would not a total silence of this 
great apostle and evangelist upon this mystery be 
strange ? A mystery^ T say ; for it is a mystery ; it 
is the only mystery in our religious worship. When 
many of the disciples left our Lord_, and apparently 
on the very ground that this saying was hard^ he does 
not attempt to detain them by any explanation^ but 
simply adds the comment^ that his words were spirit. 
If he had really meant that the eucharist should be a 
mere commemorative celebration of his death, is it 
conceivable that he would let these disciples go away 
fi'om him upon such a gross misunderstanding ? 
Would he not have said, ^^You need not make a 
difficulty; I only mean so and so ?^^ 

Arnauld, and the other learned Eomanists, are 
irresistible against the low sacramentary doctrine. 



The sacrament of baptism applies itself, and has 
reference to the faith or conviction, and is, therefore, 
only to be performed once ; — it is the light of man. 
The sacrament of the eucharist is a symbol of all 
our religion ; — it is the life of man. It is commen- 
surate with our wiU, and we must, therefore, want 
it continually. 

The meaning of the expression, et ixrj rjv (tol btbofxivov 
av(i)dev^ ^^ except it were given thee from above/' in 
the 19th chapter of St. John, ver. II., seems to me 
to have been generally and grossly mistaken. It is 
commonly understood as importing that Pilate could 
have no power to deliver Jesus to the Jews, unless it 
had been given him 5y God^ which, no doubt, is true ; 



78 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

hut if that is the meaning, where is the force or con- 
nexion of the following clause,, bia tovto^ ^^ therefore 
he that delivered me unto thee hath the greater sin P^"* 
In what respect were the Jews more sinful in deliver- 
ing Jesus up, hecmise Pilate could do nothing except 
by God^s leave ? The explanation of Erasmus and 
Clarke, and some others, is very dry-footed. I con- 
ceive the meaning of our Lord to have been simply 
this, that Pilate would have had no power or juris- 
diction — i^ovcTiav — over him, if it had not been given 
by the Sanhedrim, the avco jSovkrjy and therefore it 
was that the Jews had the greater sin. There was 
also this further peculiar baseness and malignity in 
the conduct of the Jews. The mere assumption of 
Messiahship, as such, was no crime in the eyes of the 
Jews ; they hated Jesus, because he would not be their 
sort of Messiah : on the other hand, the Ptomans cared 
not for his declaration that he was the Son of God ; 
the crime in their eyes was his assuming to be a king. 
Now, here were the Jews accusing Jesus before the 
Eoman governor of that which, in the first place, they 
knew that Jesus denied in the sense in which they 
urged it, and which, in the next place, had the charge 
been true, would have been so far from a crime in 
their eyes, that the very gospel history itself, as well 
as all the history to the destruction of Jerusalem, 
shows it would have been popular with the whole 
nation. They wished to destroy him, and for that 
purpose charge him falsely with a crime w^lnch yet 
was no crime in their own eyes, if it had been true ; 
but only so as against the Roman domination, which 
they hated with aU their souls, and against which they 
were themselves continually conspiring ! 



MOSAIC PPvOPHECIES. 79 

Observe^ 1 praj^, the manner and sense in wliicli 
the liigh-priest understands the pLain declaration of 
our Lord^ that he was the Son of God.* ^^ I adjure 
thee by the li^dng God^ that thou tell us whether thou 
be the Christy the Son of God/'' or ^' the Son of the 
Blessed/^ as it is in Mark. Jesus said^ ^^ I am^ — 
and hereafter ye shall see the Son of man (or me) 
sitting on the right hand of power^ and coming in the 
clouds of heaven.^^ Does Caiaphas take tliis explicit 
answer as if Jesus meant that he was full of God^s 
spirit^ or was doing his commands^ or walking in his 
ways^ in which sense Moses^ the prophets^ nay, all 
good men, were and are the sons of God ? iVo, no ! 
He tears his robes in sunder, and cries out, ^^ He hath 
spoken blasphemy. TVTiat further need have we of 
witnesses? Behold, now ye have heard his blas- 
phemy.^'' T\Tiat blasphemy, I should like to know, 
unless the assuming to be the ^^ Son of God ^^ was 
assuming to be of the divine nature? 



One striking proof of the genuineness of the Mosaic 
books is this, — ^they contain precise prohibitions — by 
way of predicting the consequences of disobedience — 
of all those things which David and Solomon actually 
did, and gloried in doing, — raising cavalry, making a 
treaty with Egypt, laying up treasure, and polyga- 
mising. Now, would such prohibitions have been 
fabricated in those kings^ reigns, or afterwards ? 
Impossible. 

The manner of the predictions of Moses is very 
remarkable. He is Hke a man standing on an eminence, 
and addressing people below him, and pointing to 

* Matt. xxvi. V. 63. Mark, xiv. 61. 



80 COLEETDGE S TABLE TALK. 

things which he can^ and they cannot, see. He does 
not say, You will act in such and such a way, and 
the consequences will be so and so ; but. So and so 
will take place, because you wiE act in such a way ! 



May 21, 1830. 
Talent and Genius, — Motives and Impulses, 

Hj^ALENT, lying in the understanding, is often 
-L inherited; genius, being the action of reason 
and imagination, rarely or never. 



Motives imply weakness, and the existence of evil 
and temptation. The angehc nature would act from 
impulse alone. A due mean of motive and impulse 
is the only practicable object of our moral philosophy. 



May 23, 1830. 

Constitutional and Functional Life. — Hysteria. — Hydro-Carlonic 
Gas, — Bitters and Tonics. — Specific Medicines. 

TT is a great error in physiology not to distinguish 
J- between what may be called the general or fun- 
damental Hfe — the princijomm vitce, and the functional 
life — the life in the functions. Organisation must 
presuppose life as anterior to it : without life, there 
could not be or remain any organisation ; but then 
there is also a life in the organs, or functions, distinct 
from the other. Thus, a flute presupposes, — demands 
the existence of a musician as anterior to it, without 
whom no flute could ever have existed ; and yet again, 
without the instrument there can be no music. 



It often happens that, on the one hand, the jprin- 



BITTERS AND TONICS. 81 

cijmim vita, or constitutional life^ may be affected 
\^'ithout any, or the least imaginable, affection of the 
functions ; as, in inoculation, where one pustule only 
has appeared, and no other perceptible sjonptom, and 
yet this has so entered into the constitution, as to 
indispose it to infection under the most accumulated 
and intense contagion, and, on the other hand, hysteria, 
hydrophobia, and gout, will disorder the functions to 
the most dreadful degree, and yet often leave the life 
untouched. In hydrophobia, the mind is quite sound ; 
but the patient feels his muscular and cutaneous life 
forcibly removed from under the control of his will. 

Hysteria may be fitly called mimosa, from its coun- 
terfeiting so many diseases, — even death itself. 



Hydro-carbonic gas produces the most death-like 
exhaustion, without any previous excitement. I think 
this gas should be inhaled by way of experiment in 
cases of hydrophobia. 

There is a great difference between bitters and tonics. 
^Vhere weakness proceeds from excess of irritabiUty, 
there bitters act beneficially ; because all bitters are 
poisons, and operate by stilling, and depressing, and 
lethargizing the irritability. But where weakness 
proceeds from the opposite cause of relaxation, there 
tonics are good; because they brace up and tighten 
the loosened string. Bracing is a correct metaphor. 
Bark goes near to be a combination of a bitter and a 
tonic ; but no perfect medical combination of the two 
properties is yet known. 

The study of specific medicines is too much dis- 



82 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

regarded now. No doubt the hunting after specifics 
is a mark of ignorance and weakness in medicine, yet 
the neglect of them is proof also of immaturity ; for,, 
in fact, all medicines will be found specific in the 
perfection of the science. 



May 25, 1830. 
Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians, — Oatlis, 

nPHE Epistle to the Ephesians is evidently a cathoKc 
^ epistle, addressed to the whole of what might be 
called St. Pau?s diocese. It is one of the divinest 
compositions of man. It embraces every doctrine 
of Cliristianity; — first, those doctrines peculiar to 
Christianity, and then those precepts common to it 
with natural reHgion. The Epistle to the Colossians 
is the overflowing, as it were, of St. Paulas mind upon 
the same subject. 

The present system of taking oaths is horrible. It 
is awfully absurd to make a man invoke God^s wrath 
upon himself, if he speaks false ; it is, in my judg- 
ment, a sin to do so. The Jews^ oath is an adjuration 
by the judge to the witness : ^^ In the name of God, 
I ask you.''^ There is an express instance of it in the 
high-priest^s adjuring or exorcising Christ by the 
living God, in the twenty-sixth chapter of Matthew, 
and you will observe that our Lord answered the 
appeal."^ 

You may depend upon it, the more oath-taking, the 
more lying, generally among the people. 

* See this instance cited, and the whole history and moral policy of the 
common system of judicial STvearing examined with clearness and good 
feeling, in Mr. Tyler's late work on Oaths. — Ed. 



ELOQUENCE OF ABUSE. S3 

May 27, 1830. 
Flogging. — Eloqv£nce of Abuse. 

T HAD one just flogging. When I was about 
-^ tliirteen^ I went to a shoemaker^ and begged him 
to take me as his apprentice. He^ being an honest 
man^ immediately brought me to Bowyer^ who got 
into a great rage^ knocked me down^ and even pushed 
Crispin rudely out of the room. Bowyer asked me 
why I had made myseK such a fool? to which I 
answered^ that I had a great desire to be a shoemaker^ 
and that I hated the thought of being a clergj^nan. 
^^TThy so?^^ said he. — ^^ Because^ to tell you the 
truth, sn/^ said I, '^ I am an infidel ! '^ For tliis, 
without more ado, Bowyer flogged me, — wisely, as I 
think, — soundly, as I know. Any whining or ser- 
monizing would have gratified my vanity, and con- 
firmed me in my absurdity ; as it was, I was laughed 
at, and got heartily ashamed of my folly. 



How rich the Aristophanic Greek is in the eloquence 
of abuse ! — 

'XI ^deXvpe^ KOLvaiax^vTe, koX To\/j.r]pe crv, 
Kal ixiape, kol Traix/xiape, kol fjnaparar^.^" 

We are not beliindhand in Enghsh. Fancy my 
caUing you, upon a fitting occasion, — Fool, sot, silly, 
simpleton, dunce, blockhead, jolterhead, clumsy-pate, 
dullard, ninny, nincompoop, lackwit, numskull, ass, 
owl, loggerhead, coxcomb, monkey, shallow-brain, 
addlehead, tony, zany, fop, fop-doodle; a maggot- 
pated, hare-brained, muddle-pated, muddle-headed. 
Jackanapes ! Why I could go on for a minute more! 

* In The Frogs.— Ed. 



84 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

May 28, 1830. 
The Americans. 

T DEEPLY regret the anti- American articles of 
-^ some of the leading reviews. The Americans 
regard what is said of them in England a thousand 
times more than they do anything said of them in 
any other country. The Americans are excessively 
pleased Mith any kind or favoni'able expressions^ and 
never forgive or forget any shght or abuse. It would 
be better for them if they were a trifle thicker-skinned. 



The last American war was to us only something to 
talk or read about ; but to the Americans it was the 
cause of misery in their own homes. 

I, for one^ do not call the sod under my feet my 
country. But language^ religion^ laws^ government^ 
blood, — identity in these makes men of one country. 



May 29, 1830. 
Book of Job. 

'T^HE Book of Job is an Arab poem, antecedent to 
-L the Mosaic dispensation. It represents the mind 
of a good man not enlightened by an actual revelation, 
but seeking about for one. In no other book is the 
desire and necessity for a Mediator so intensely 
expressed. The personality of God, the I AM of the 
Hebrews, is most \dvidly impressed on the book, in 
opposition to pantheism. 

I now think, after many doubts, that the passage,* 
'' I know that my Redeemer liveth,^^ &c., may fairly 
be taken as a burst of determination, a qiiasi pro- 

* Chap. xix. 25, 26. 



TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS. 85 

pliecy. ^' I know not Jwio tins can be ; but in spite 
of all my difficulties^ this I do know^ that I shall be 
recompensed/^ 

It should be observed^ that all the imagery in the 
speeches of the men is taken from the East^ and is no 
more than a mere representation of the forms of 
material nature. But when God speaks the tone is 
exalted; and almost all the images are taken from 
Egj-pt^ the crocodile^ the war-horse^ and so forth. 
Egj^Dt was then the fii'st monarchy that had a splendid 
court. 

Satan^ in the prologue^ does not mean the de^dl^ 
our Diabolus. There is no calumny in his words. 
He is rather the circidtor, the accusing spirit^ a dra- 
matic attorney-general. But after the prologue, wliich 
was necessary to bring the imagination into a proper 
state for the dialogue, we hear no more of this Satan. 

Warburton^s notion, that the Book of Job was of so 
late a date as Ezra, is wholly groundless. His only 
reason is this appearance of Satan. 



May 30, 1830. 
Translation of the Psalms, 

ITTISH the Psalms were translated afresh; or, 
rather, that the present version were re^dsed. 
Scores of passages are utterly incoherent as they now 
stand. If the primary visual images had been oftener 
preser^^ed, the connection and force of the sentences 
would have been better perceived.^ 

* Mr. Coleridge, like so many of the elder divines of the Cliristian church, 
liad an affectionate reverence for the moral and evangelical portion of the 
Book of Psalms. He told me that after having studied every page of the 



86 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

May 31, 1830. 
Ancient Mariner. — Undine. — Martin, — Pilginrn's Progress. 

MRS. BAEBAULD once told me that she admired 
the Ancient Mariner very much_, but that there 
were two faults in it^ — it was improbable^ and had no 
moral. As for the probability^ I owned that that 
might admit some question ; but as to the want of a 
morale I told her that in my own judgment the poem 
had too much ; and that the only^ or chief faulty if I 
might say so^ was the obtrusion of the moral senti- 
ment so openly on the reader as a principle or cause 
of action in a work of such pure imagination. It ought 
to have had no more moral than the Arabian Nights^ 

Bible with the deepest attention, he had found no other part of Scripture 
come home so closely to his inmost yearnings and necessities. During many 
of his latter years he used to read ten or twelve verses every evening, 
ascertaining (for his knowledge of Hebrew was enough for that) the exact 
visual image or first radical meaning of every noun substantive; and he 
repeatedly expressed to me his surprise and pleasure at finding that in nine 
cases out of ten the bare primary sense, if literally rendered, threw great 
additional light on the text. He was not disposed to allow the prophetic or 
allutdve character so largely as is done by Home and others ; but he acknow- 
ledged it in some instances in the fullest manner. In particular, he rejected 
the local and temporary reference which has been given to the 110th Psalm, 
and declared his belief in its deep mystical import with regard to the 
Messiah. Mr. C. once gave me the following note upon the 22nd Psalm 
written by him, I believe, many years previously, but which, he said, he 
approved at that time. It will find as appropriate a niche here as anywhere 
else : — 

" I am much delighted and instructed by the hypothesis, which I think 
probable, that our Lord in repeating Eli, Eli, lama sahacthani, really recited 
the whole or a large part of the 22d Psalm. It is impossible to read that 
psalm without the liveliest feelings of love, gratitude, and sympathy. It is, 
indeed, a wonderful prophecy, whatever might or might not have been 
David's notion when he composed it. Whether Christ did audibly repeat 
the whole or not, it is certain I think, that he did it mentally, and said aloud 
what was sufficient to enable his followers to do the same. Even at this day 
to repeat in the same manner but the first line of a common hymn, would be 
understood as a reference to the whole. Above all, I am thankful for the 
thought which suggested itself to my mind, whilst I was reading this 
beautiful psalm, namely, that we should not exclusively think of Christ as 
the Logos united to human nature, but likewise as a perfect man united to 
the Logos. This distinction is most important in order to conceive, much 
more, appropriately to feel, the conduct and exertions of Jesus." — Ed. 



ANCIENT MARINER. 87 

tale of the merchant's sitting down to eat dates by 
the side of a well, and tliro\\ing the shells aside, and 
lo ! a genie starts up, and says he must kill the 
aforesaid merchant, because one of the date shells had, 
it seems, put out the eve of the geiiie's son.^ 



I took the thought of " grinning for joy,^^ in that 
poem, from my companion's remark to me, when we 
had climbed to the top of Plinlimmon, and were nearly 
dead ^Yith thirst. TTe could not speak from the con- 
striction, till we found a Kttle puddle under a stone. 
He said to me, — ^^ You grinned like an idiot ! '' He 
had done the same. 

* " There he found, at the foot of a great "vralnut-tree, a fountain of a very 
clear running water, and alighting, tied his horse to a branch of a tree, and 
sitting do-vm by the fountain, took some biscuits and dates out of his port- 
manteau, and, as he ate his dates, thre^v the shells about on both sides o 
him. "When he had done eating, being a good Mussulman, he washed his 
hands, his face, and his feet, and said his prayers. He had not made an 
end, but was still on his knees, when he saw a genie appear, all white with 
age, and of a monstrous bulk ; who, advancing towards him with a cimetar 
in his hand, spoke to him in a teiTible voice thus : — ' Else up, that I may 
kill thee with this cimetar as you have killed my son ! " and accompanied 
these words with a frightful cry. The merchant being as much frightened 
at the hideous shape of the monster as at these threatening words, answered 
him trembling : — ' Alas ! my good lord, of what crime can I be guilty towards 
you that you should take away my life ? ' — ' I will,' replies the genie, ' kill 
thee, as thou hast killed my son I ' — ' O heaven,* says the merchant, ' how 
should I kill your son ? I did not know him, nor ever saw him.' — ' Did not 
you sit down when you came hither ? ' replies the genie. ' Did not you take 
dates out of your portmanteau, and as you ate them, did not you throw the 
shells about on both sides ? ' — ' I did all that you say,' answers the merchant, 
* I cannot deny it.' — ' If it be so,' replied the genie, * I tell thee that thou hast 
killed my son ; and the way was thus : when you threw the nutshells about, 
my son was passing by, and you threw one of them into his eye, which killed 
him, therefore I must kill thee.' — ' Ah ! my good lord, pardon me ! ' cried the 
merchant. — * No pardon,' answers the genie, ' no mercy t Is it not just to 
kill him that has killed another ? '— ' I agree to it,' says the merchant, ' but 
certainly I never killed your son, and if I have, it was unknown to me, and 
I did it innocently ; therefore I beg you to pardon me, and suffer me to live.' 
— ' No, no,' says the genie, persisting in his resolution, ' I must kill thee, 
_ since thou hast killed my son : ' and then taking the merchant by the arm, 
threw him with his face upon the ground, and lifted up his cimetar to cut off 
his head ! " — The Merchant and the Genie. Fii-st night. — Ed. 



88 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Undine is a most exquisite work. It shows the 
general want of any sense for the line and the subtle 
in the public taste^ that this romance made no deep 
impression. Undine^s character^ before she receives 
a soul^ is marvellously beautiful.* 



It seems to me^ that Martin never looks at nature 
except through bits of stained glass. He is never 
satisfied with any appearance that is not prodigious. 
He should endeavour to school his imagination into 
the apprehension of the true idea of the Beautiful, t 



The wood-cut of Slay-good J is admirable, to be 
sure ; but this new edition of the Pilgrim^s Progress 
is too fine a book for it. It should be much larger, 
and on sixpenny coarse paper. 

The Pilgrim^s Progress is composed in the lowest 
style of English, without slang or false grammar. If 
you were to polish it, you would at once destroy the 

* Mr. Coleridge's admiration of this little romance vras unbounded. He 
read it several times in German, and once in the English translation, made 
in America, I helieve; the latter he thought inadequately done. Mr. C. 
said that there was something in Undine even beyond Scott, — that Scott's 
best characters and conceptions were composed ; by which I understood him 
to mean that Baillie Nicol Jarvie, for example, was made up of old particulars, 
and received its individuality from the author's power of fusion, being in the 
result an admirable product, as Corinthian brass was said to be the conflux 
of the spoils of a city. But Undine, he said, was one and single in projection, 
and had presented to his imagination, what Scott had never done, an abso- 
lutely new idea. — Ed. 

t Mr. Coleridge said this, after looking at the engravings of Mr. Martin's 
two pictures of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and the Celestial City, 
published in the beautifal edition of the " Pilgrim's Progress," by Messrs. 
Murray and Major, in 1830. I wish Mr. Martin could have heard the poet's 
lecture : he would have been flattered, and at the same time, I believe in- 
structed ; for in the philosophy of painting Coleridge was a master. — Ed. 

X P. 350, by S. Mosses from a design by Mr. W. Harvey. " When they 
came to the place where he was, they foimd him with one Feeble-mind in his 
hand, whom his servants had brought unto him, having taken him in the 
way. Now the giant was rifling him, with a purpose, after that, to pick his 
bones : for he was of the nature of flesh-eaters." — Ed. 



PRAYER. S9 



reality of the vision. For works of imagination 
should be written in very phiin language ; the more 
pm*ely imaginative they are the more necessary it is 
to be plain. 

Tliis wonderful work is one of the few books which 
may be read over repeatedly at different times^ and 
each time with a new and different pleasure. I read 
it once as a theologian — and let me assure you^ that 
there is great theological acumen in the work — once 
with devotional feelings — and once as a poet. I could 
not have believed beforehand that Cahinism could be 
painted in such exquisitely delightful colours.* 



June 1, 1830. 
Prayer, — Church-singing, — Hoolcer. — Dreariis , 

nnHEEE are three sorts of prayer: — 1. Public; 
-*- 2. Domestic j 3. Solitary. Each has its peculiar 
uses and character. I think the church ought to 
publish and authorise a directory of forms for the 
latter two. Yet I fear the execution would be 
inadequate. There is a great decay of devotional 
unction in the numerous books of prayers put out 
now-a-days. I really think the hawker was very 
happy^ who blundered New Form of Prayer into New 
former Prayers. f 

* I find Trritten on a blank leaf of my copy of this edition of the P."s P., 
the foUoTiving note by Mr. C. : — **' I kno^r of no book, the Bible excepted as 
above aU comparison, ^hich I, according to my judgment and experience, 
could so safely recommend as teaching and enforcing the -^hole saving truth 
according to the mind that -n-as in Christ Jesus, as the ' Pilgrim's Progress.' 
It is, in my conviction, incomparably the best summa theologicB evangeliccs 
ever produced by a -^vriter not miraculously inspired.'' June 14, 1830. — Ed. 
t '' I -vrill add, at the risk of appearing to d^rell too long on religious topics, 
- that on this, my first inti'oduction to Coleridge, he reverted -svith strong 
compunction to a sentiment which he had expressed in earlier days upon 
prayer. In one of his youthful poems, speaking of God, he had said, — 



90 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

I exceedingly regret that our church pays so Uttle 
attention to the subject of congregational singing. 
See how it is ! In that particular part of the public 
worship in which, more than in all the rest, the com- 
mon people might, and ought to, join, — ^which, by its 
association with music, is meant to give a fitting vent 
and expression to the emotions, — in that part we all 
sing as Jews ; or, at best, as mere men, in the 
abstract, without a Saviour. You know my venera- 
tion for the Book of Psalms, or most of it ; but with 
some half-dozen exceptions, the Psalms are surely not 
adequate vehicles of Christian thanksgiving and joy ! 
Upon this deficiency in our service, Wesley and 
"W hitfield seized ; and you know it is the hearty con- 
gregational singing of Christian hymns which keeps 
the humbler Methodists together. Luther did as 

' Of whose all-seeing eye 

Aught to demand were impotence of mind.' 

This sentiment he now so utterly condemned, that, on the contrary, he told 
me, as his own peculiar opinion, that the act of praying was the very highest 
energy of which the human heart was capable, praying, that is, with the 
total concentration of the faculties ; and the great mass of worldly men and 
of learned men he pronounced absolutely incapable of prayer." — Tait^s 
3Iagazine, September, 1834, p. 515. 

Mr. Coleridge within two years of his death very solemnly declared to me 
his conviction upon the same subject. I was sitting by his bedside one 
afternoon, and he fell, an unusual thing for him, into a long account of many 
passages of his past life, lamenting some things, condemning others, but 
complaining withal, though very gently, of the way in which many of his most 
innocent acts had been cruelly misrepresented. " But I have no difficulty," 
said he, " in forgiveness ; indeed, I know not how to say with sincerity the 
clause in the Lord's Prayer, which asks forgiveness as we forgive. I feel 
nothing answering to it in my heart. Neither do I find, or reckon, the most 
solemn faith in God as a real object, the most arduous act of the reason and 
■wall. no, my dear, it is to pray, to pray as God would have us ; this is 
what at times makes me turn cold to my soul. Believe me, to pray with all 
your heart and strength, with the reason and the will, to believe vividly that 
God will listen to your voice through Christ, and verily do the thing he 
pleaseth thereupon — this is the last, the greatest achievement of the 
Christian's warfare upon earth. Teach us to pray, O Lord ! " And then he, 
burst into a flood of tears, and begged me to pray for him. O what a sight 
was there ! — Ed, 



JEREMY TAYLOK. 91 



much for the Eeformation by liis hjTnns as by his 
translation of the Bible. In Germany^, the h}Tnns 
are known by heart by every peasant : they advise, 
they argue from the hjmns, and every soul in the 
church praises God, like a Cliiistian, with words 
which are natural and yet sacred to his mind. Xo 
doubt this defect in our service proceeded from the 
dread wliich the Enghsh Eeformers had of being 
charged with introducing anything into the worship 
of God but the text of Scripture. 

Hooker said, — That by looking for that in the 
Bible which it is impossible any looh can have, we 
lose the benefits which we might reap from its being 
the test of all books. 

You will observe, that even in dreams nothing is 
fancied without an antecedent quasi cause. It could 
not be otherwise. 



June 4, 1830. 
Jeremy Taylor, — English Reformation, 

nn AYLOE^S ^ was a great and lovely mind ; yet how 
J- much and injuriously was it perverted by his 
being a favourite and follower of Laud, and by his 

* Mr. Coleridge placed Jeremy Taylor amongst the four great geniuses of 
old English literature. I think he used to reckon Shakspeare and Bacon, 
Milton and Taylor, four-square, each against each. In mere eloquence, he 
thought the Bishop mthout any fellow. He called him Chrysostom. Fur- 
ther, he loved the man, and was anxious to find excuses for some weak parts 
in his character. But Mr. Coleridge's assent to Taylor's views of many of 
the fundamental positions of Christianity was very limited : and, indeed, he 
considered him as the least sound in point of doctrine of any of the old 
divines, comprehending, within that designation, the writers to the middle of 
Charles II.'s reign. He speaks of Taylor in '• The Friend" in the following 
'terms : — " Among the numerous examples with which I might enforce this 
warning, I refer, not without reluctance, to the most eloquent, and one of the 
most learned, of our divines ; a rigorist, indeed, concerning the authority of 



92 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

intensely popish feelings of cliurch authority. His 
Liberty of Prophesying is a work of wonderful elo- 
quence and skill; but if we believe the argument, 
what do we come to ? Wliy to nothing more or less 
than this, that — so much can be said for every opinion 
and sect, — so impossible is it to settle anything by 
reasoning or authority of Scripture, — we must appeal 
to some positive jurisdiction on earth, ut sit finis con- 
troversianim. In fact, the whole book is the precise 
argument used by the Papists to induce men to admit 
the necessity of a supreme and infaUible head of the 
church on earth. It is one of the works wliich pre- 
eminently gives countenance to the sajing of Charles 
or James II., I forget which : — '^ When you of the 
Church of England contend with the Cathohcs, you 
use the arguments of the Puritans ; when you con- 
tend with the Puritans, you immediately adopt all 
the weapons of the Catholics.'^'' Taylor never speaks 
with the slightest symptom of affection or respect of 
Luther, Calvin, or any other of the great Reformers — 
at least, not in any of his learned works; but he 
saints every trumpery monk and friar, down to the 
very latest canonizations by the modern popes. I 
fear you will think me harsh, when I say that I 
beHeve Taylor was, perhaps unconsciously, half a 
Socinian in heart. Such a strange inconsistency 
would not be impossible. The Eomish Church has 
produced many such devout Socinians. The cross of 
Clirist is dimly seen in Taylor^s works. Compare him 
in tliis particular with Donne, and you will feel the 

the cliurch, but a latitudinarian in the articles of its faith; who stretched the 

latter almost to the advanced posts of Socinianism, and strained the former 
to a hazardous conformity with the assumptions of the Roman hierarchy." 
Vol. ii. p. 108.— Ed. 



ENGLISH REFORMATION. 93 



difference in a moment. Why are not Donne^s volumes 
of sermons reprinted at Oxford ? * 



In the reign of Edward VI.^ the Reformers feared 
to admit ahnost anytliing on human authority alone. 
They had seen and felt the abuses consequent on the 
popish theory of Cliristianity ; and I doubt not they 
wished and intended to reconstruct the religion and 
the churchy as far as was possible^ upon the plan of 
the primitive ages. But the Puritans pushed this 
bias to an absolute bibholatry. They would not put 
on a corn-plaster without scraping a text over it. 
Men of learnings however^ soon felt that this was 
wrong in the other extreme^ and indeed united itseK 
to the very abuse it seemed to shun. They saw that 
a knowledge of the Fathers^ and of early tradition, 
was absolutely necessary; and unhappily, in many 
instances, the excess of the Puritans drove the men 
of learning into the old popish extreme of denying 
the Scriptures to be capable of affording a rule of 
faith without the dogmas of the church. Taylor is a 
striking instance how far a Protestant might be driven 
in this direction. 

* Why not, indeed ! It is really quite unaccountable that the sermons of 
this great divine of the English church should be so little kno^TU as they are, 
even to very literary clergymen of the present day. It might have been 
expected, that the sermons of the greatest preacher of his age, the admired 
of Ben Jonson, Selden, and all that splendid band of poets and scholars, 
would even as curiosities have been reprinted, when works, which are 
curious for nothing, are every year sent forth afresh under the most authori- 
tative auspices. Dr. Donne was educated at both universities, at Hart Hall, 
Oxford, first, and afterwards at Cambridge, but at what college Walton does 
not mention. — Ed. 



94 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

JuxXE 6, 1830. 
Catholicity. — Gnosis. — Tertullian.— St, John. 

IN the first century^ catholicity was the test of a 
book or epistle — whether it were of the Evan- 
gelicon or Apostolicori — being canonical. This catholic 
spirit was opposed to the gnostic or peculiar spirit^ — 
the humour of fantastical interpretation of the old 
Scriptures into Christian meanings. It is this gnosis, 
or hnowingnesSy which the Apostle says pujffeth up, — 
not hnowledge, as we translate it. The Epistle of 
Barnabas, of the genuineness of which I have no 
sort of doubt, is an example of this gnostic spirit. 
The Epistle to the Hebrews is the only instance of 
gnosis in the canon : it was written evidently by 
some apostolical man before the destruction of the 
Temple, and probably at Alexandria. For three 
hundred years, and more, it was not admitted into 
the canon, especially not by the Latin church, on 
account of this difference in it from the other Scrip- 
tures. But its merit was so great, and the gnosis in 
it is so kept within due bounds, that its admirers at 
last succeeded, especially by affixing St. Paulas name to 
it, to have it included in the canon ; which was fij'st 
done, I think, by the council of Laodicea in the middle 
of the fourth century. Fortunately for us it was so. 



I beg Tertullian^s pardon; but amongst his many 
hravuras, he says sometliing about St. Paulas auto- 
graph. Origen expressly declares the reverse. 



It is delightful to think, that the beloved apostle 
was born a Plato. To him was left the aLmost oracular 



PRINCIPLES OF A REVIEW. 95 

utterance of the mysteries of the Cliristian reHgion ; -^ 
while to St. Paul was committed the task of expla- 
nation, defence, and assertion of all the doctrines, 
and especially of those metaphysical ones touching 
the will and grace; for which purpose his active 
mind, his learned education, and liis Greek logic, 
made him pre-eminently fit. 



June 7, 1830. 
Principles of a Review. — Party-spirit. 

NOTWITHSTANDING what you say, I am per- 
suaded that a review would amply succeed even 
now, wliich should be started upon a published code 
of principles, critical, moral, political, and rehgious ; 
wliich should announce what sort of books it would 
review, namely, works of literature as contradistin- 
guished from all that offspring of the press, which in 
the present age suppKes food for the craving caused 
by the extended abihty of reading without any cor- 
respondent education of the mind, and which formerly 
was done by conversation, and which should reaUy 
give a fair account of what the author intended to do, 
and in his own words, if possible, and in addition, 
afford one or two fair specimens of the execution, — 
itself never descending for one moment to any per- 
sonahty. It should also be provided before the com- 
mencement with a dozen powerful articles upon 
fundamental topics to appear in succession. You see 
the great reviewers are now ashamed of reviewing 
works in the old style, and have taken up essay 

' * " The imperative and oracular fonn of the inspired Scripture is the form 
of reason itself, in all things purely rational and moral." — Statesman's 
Manual, p. 22. 



96 Coleridge's table talk. 

writing instead. Hence arose such publications as 
the Literary Gazette and others^ which are set up for 
the purpose — not a useless one — of advertising new 
books of all sorts for the circulating libraries. A mean 
between the two extremes still remains to be taken. 



Party men always hate a slightly differing friend 
more than a downright enemy. I quite calculate on 
my being one day or other holden in worse repute 
by many Christians than the Unitarians and open 
infidels. It must be undergone by every one who loves 
the truth for its own sake beyond all other things. 



Truth is a good dog ; but beware of barking too 
close to the heels of an error^ lest you get your brains 
kicked out. 



June 10, 1830. 

Southey^s Life of Bunyan. — Laud. — Puritans and Cavaliers. — 
Presbyterians, Independents, and Bishops. 

SOUTHED S Life of Bunyan is beautiful. I wish 
he had illustrated that mood of mind which 
exaggerates^ and still more^ mistakes^ the inward 
depravation^ as in Bunyan^ Nelson^ and others, by 
extracts from Baxter's Life of himself. What genuine 
superstition is exemplified in that bandying of texts 
and half-texts, and demi-semi-texts, just as memory 
happened to suggest them, or chance brought them 
before Bunyan's mind ! His tract, entitled, ^^ Grace 
abounding to the Chief of Sinners,'''* is a study for 
a philosopher. Is it not, however, an historical error 

* Grace abounding to the Chief of Sinners, in a faithM Account of the 
Life and Death of John Bunyan, &c. 



STUDY OF THE BIBLE. 97 

to call the Puritans dissenters ? Before St. Bartholo- 
mew's day, they were essentially a part of the church, 
and had as determined opinions in favour of a church 
estabhslmient as the bishops themselves. 



Laud was not exactly a Papist, to be sure ; but he 
was on the road with the church with liim to a point, 
where declared popery would have been inevitable. 
A wise and \dgorous Papist king would very soon, 
and very justifiably too, in that case, have effected a 
reconciliation between the churches of Eome and 
England, when the hue of demarcation had become 
so very faint. 

The faults of the Puritans were many ; but s urely 
their morality will, in general, bear comparison with 
that of the CavaHers after the Eestoration. 



The Presbyterians hated the Independents much 
more than they did the bishops, which induced them 
to co-operate in effecting the Restoration. 



The conduct of the bishops towards Charles, whilst 
at Breda, was wise and constitutional. They knew, 
however, that when the forms of the constitution were 
once restored, all their power would revive again as 
of course. 



I 



June 14, 1830. 
Study of the Bible. 

NTENSE study of the Bible will keep any writer 
from beiQg vulgar, in point of style. 



98 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

June 15, 1830. 
Rabelais. — Sioift. — Bentley. — Burnet, 

RABELAIS is a most wonderful writer. Panta- 
gruel is the Reason; Panurge the Understandings 
— the pollarded man^ the man with every faculty 
except the reason. I scarcely know an example 
more illustrative of the distinction between the two. 
Rabelais had no mode of speaking the truth in those 
days but in such a form as this ; as it was^ he was 
indebted to the King^s protection for his Hfe. Some 
of the commentators talk about his book being all 
poHtical; there are contemporary politics in it^ of 
course^ but the real scope is much higher and more 
philosophical. It is in vain to look about for a 
hidden meaning in all that he has written ; you wiU 
observe that^ after any particularly deep thrust,, as the 
Papimania^"^ for example^ Rabelais, as if to break the 
blow, and to appear unconscious of what he has done, 
writes a chapter or two of pure buffoonery. He, 
every now and then, jSashes you a glimpse of a real 
face from his magic lantern, and then buries the 
whole scene in mist. The morality of the work is of 
the most refined and exalted kind ; as for the man- 
ners, to be sure, I cannot say much. 

Swift was anima Rahellaisii habitans in sicco, — the 
soul of Rabelais dwelling in a dry place. 

Yet Swift was rare. Can anything beai his remark 
on King William^ s motto, — Eecepit, non rapuit^ — 
^' that the receiver was as bad as the thief ? ^^ 

* B. iv. c. 48. " Comment Pantagruel descendit en I'lsle de Papimanes. 
See the five following chapters, especially c. 50 ; and note also c. 9 of the 
fifth book ; " Comment nous fut monstre Papegaut k grande difdculte." — Ed 



GIOTTO. 99 



The etfect of the Tory wits attacking Bentley with 
such acrimony has been to make them appear a set of 
shallow and incompetent scholars. JS'either Bentley 
nor Burnet suffered from the hostility of the wits. 
Burnetts ^' History of his own Times '^ is a truly 
valuable book. His credulity is great^ but his sim- 
plicity is equally great ; and he never deceives you for 
a moment. 



June 25, 1830. 
Giotto. — Painting. 

^HE fresco paintings by Giotto'^ and others^ in the 
-■- cemetery at Pisa._, are most noble. Giotto was a 
contemporary of Dante : and it is a curious question^ 
whether the painters borrowed from the poet^ or vice 
versa. Certainly M. Angelo and Eaffael fed their 
imaginations highly with these grand drawings^ espe- 
cially M. Angelo^ who took from them his bold yet 
graceful Hues. 

People may say what they please about the gradual 
improvement of the Arts. It is not true of the sub- 
stance. The Arts and the Muses both spring forth 
in the youth of nations^ like Minerva from the front 
of Jupiter^ all armed : manual dexterity may^ indeed^ 
be improved by practice. 

* Giotto, or Angiolotto's birtli is fixed by Vasari in 1276, but there is some 
reason to think that he was bom a little earlier. Dante, who was his friend, 
was bom in 1265. Giotto was the pupil of Cimabue, whom he entirely 
eclipsed, as Dante testifies in the well-known lines in the Purgatorio : — 

" vana gloria dell' umane posse ! 
Com' poco verde in sii la cima dura, 
Se non e giunta dall' etati grosse! 
Credette Cimabue nella pintura 

Tener lo campo : ed ora ha Giotto il grido. 
Si che la fama di colui oscura." — C. xi. v. 91. 
His six great frescoes in the cemetery at Pisa are upon the sufferings and 
patience of Job.— Ed. 

H 2 



100 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Painting went on in power till^ in Raffael^ it 
attained the zenith^ and in him too it showed signs of 
a tendency downwards by another path. The painter 
began to think of overcoming difficulties. After this 
the descent was rapid^ till sculptors began to work 
inveterate likenesses of perriwigs in marble^ — as see 
Algarotti^s tomb in the cemetery at Pisa^ — and 
painters did nothing but copy^ as well as they could^ 
the external face of nature. Now^ in this age^ we 
have a sort of reviviscence^ — not^ I fear^ of the power^ 
but of a taste for the power^ of the early times. 



June 26, 1830. 

Seneca. 

T/'OU may get a motto for every sect in rehgion^ or 
-■- Hne of thought in morals or philosophy^ from 
Seneca ; but nothing is ever thought out by liim. 



July 2, 1830. 
Plato. — A ristotle. 

T? YEEY man is born an Aristotelian^ or a Platonist. 
-^ I do not think it possible that any one born an 
Aristotelian can become a Platonist ; and I am sure 
no born Platonist can ever change into an Aristotelian. 
They are the two classes of men_, beside which it is 
next to impossible to conceive a third. The one 
considers reason a quality^ or attribute; the other 
considers it a power. I believe that Aristotle never 
could get to understand what Plato meant by an idea. 
There is a passage^ indeed^ in the Eudemian Ethics 
which looks like an exception ; but I doubt not of its 
being spurious^ as that whole work is supposed by 



DUKE OF WELLINGTON. 101 

some to be. With Plato ideas are constitutive in 
themselves.* 

Aiistotle was^ and still is, the sovereign lord of the 
understanding; the faculty judging by the senses. 
He was a conceptualist,, and never could raise him- 
self into that liigher state, which was natural to Plato, 
and has been so to others, in wliich the understanding 
is distinctly contemplated, and, as it were, looked 
down upon from the throne of actual ideas, or living, 
inborn, essential truths. 

Yet what a mind was Aristotle^ s — only not the 
greatest that ever animated the human form ! — the 
parent of science, properly so called, the master of 
criticism, and the founder or editor of logic ! But 
he confounded science with philosophy, which is an 
error. Pliilosophy is the middle state between science, 
or knowledge, and sophia, or wisdom. 



July 4, 1830. 
Duke of Wellington. — Moneyed Interest. — Canning. 

T SOMETIMES fear Wiq Duke of Wellington is 
-*- too much disposed to imagine, that he can govern 
a great nation by word of command, in the same way 

* Mr. Coleridge said tlie Eiidemian Ethics ; but I half suspect he must 
have meant the Metaphysics, although I do not know that all the fourteen 
books under that title have been considered non-genuine. The 'Hdizoc 
Ev^Yifjcuoe, are not Aristotle's. To what passage in particular allusion is here 
made, I cannot exactly say ; many might be alleged, but not one seems to 
express the true Platonic idea, as Mr. Coleridge used to understand it ; and 
as, I believe, he ultimately considered ideas in his own philosophy. Four- 
teen or fifteen years previously, he seems to have been undecided upon 
this point. " Whether," he says, " ideas are regulative only, according to 
Aristotle and Kant, or likewise constitutive, and one with the power and life 
of nature, according to Plato and Plotinus ( — Iv AoV'W i^j-); '^v, %«,) vi icori ^v 
TO <pMs TMv ccvdouTTuv — ), Is the Mghcst problcm of philosophy, and not part of 
its nomenclatui'e." Essay (E) in the Appendix to the Statesman's Ifanual, 
1816.— Ed. 



102 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

in which, he governed a higlily disciplined army. He 
seems to be unaccustomed to^ and to despise, the 
inconsistencies^, the weaknesses, the bursts of heroism 
followed by prostration and cowardice, which inva- 
riably characterise all popular efforts. He forgets 
that, after all, it is from such efforts that all the great 
and noble institutions of the world have come ; and 
that, on the other hand, the discipline and organiza- 
tion of armies have been only like the flight of the 
cannon-ball, the object of which is destruction.* 

The stock-jobbing and moneyed interest is so strong 
in this country, that it has more than once prevailed in 
our foreign councils over national honour and national 
justice. The country gentlemen are not slow to join 
in tliis influence. Canning felt this very keenly, and 
said he was unable to contend against the city 
trained-bands. 



July 6, 1830. 

Boumenne, 

TIOURRIEIN^INTE is admirable. He is the French 
-L' Pepys, — a man with right feelings, but always 
wishing to participate in what is going on, be it 
what it may. He has one remark, when comparing 
Buonaparte with Charlemagne, the substance of wliich 
I have attempted to express in '' The Triend,^^ t but 
whichBourrienne has condensed into a sentence worthy 
of Tacitus, or Machiavel, or Bacon. It is this ; that 

* straight forward goes 
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path 
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies and rapid, 
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches. 

Walleyistein, Part I. act i. sc. 4. 
t Vol. i. Essay 12, p. 133. 



JEWS. 103 

Charlemagne was above his age^ whilst Buonaparte 
was only above his competitors^ but under liis age ! 
Bourrienne has done more than any one else to sliow 
Buonaparte to the world as he really was^ — always 
contemptible^ except when acting a part^ and that part 
not his own. 



July 8, 1830. 

Jews. 

T^HE other day I was what you would o^dSS. floored by 
J- a Jew. He passed me several times crying out 
for old clothes in the most nasal and extraordinary 
tone I ever heard. At last I was so provoked^ that 
I said to him^ " Pray^ why can''t you say ^ old clothes" 
in a plain way as I do now ? ^^ The Jew stopped^ and 
looking very gravely at me^ said in a clear and even 
fine accent, ^^ Sir, I can say ^ old clothes ' as weU as 
you can; but if you had to say so ten times a 
minute, for an hour together, you would say OgJi Clo 
as I do now;"" and so he marched off. I was so 
confounded with the justice of his retort, that I 
followed and gave him a shilling, the only one I had. 



I have had a good deal to do with Jews in the 
course of my life, although I never borrowed any money 
of them. Once T sat in a coach opposite a Jew — a 
symbol of old clothes" bags — an Isaiah of HolyweU 
Street. He would close the window; I opened it. 
He closed it again ; upon which, in a very solemn 
tone, I said to him, '^ Son of Abraham ! thou smeUest ; 
son of Isaac ! thou art offensive ; son of Jacob ! thou 
stinkest foully. See the man in the moon ! he is 
holding his nose at thee at that distance ; dost thou 



104 coleeidge's table talk. 

think that I^ sitting here^ can endure it any longer P ^^ 
My Jew was astounded^ opened the \\dndow forthwith 
himself^ and said_, ^^he was sorry he did not know 
before I was so great a gentleman/^ 



July 24, 1830. 
The Papacy and the Reformation, — Leo X, 

T^UEING the early part of the middle ages^ the 
-^ papacy was nothings in fact, but a confederation 
of the learned men in the west of Europe against the 
barbarism and ignorance of the times. The Pope 
was chief of this confederacy; and so long as he 
retained that character exclusively^ his power was just 
and irresistible. It was the principal mean of pre- 
serving for us and for our posterity all that we now 
have of the illumination of past ages. But as soon 
as the Pope made a separation between his character 
as premier clerk in Christendom and as a secular 
prince; as soon as he began to squabble for towns 
and castles ; then he at once broke the charm^ and 
gave birth to a revolution. Prom that moment, 
those who remained firm to the cause of truth and 
knowledge became necessary enemies to the Roman 
See. The great British schoolmen led the way ; then 
Wicliffe rose, Huss, Jerome, and others; — in short, 
everywhere, but especially throughout the north of 
Europe, the breach of feeling and sympathy went on 
widening, — so that all Germany, England, Scotland, 
and other countries, started Like giants out of their 
sleep at the first blast of Luther^s trumpet. In 
Prance, one haK of the people — and that the most 
wealthy and enlightened — embraced the Reformation. 



LEO X. THELWALL. 105 

The seeds of it T\-ere deeply and widely spread in 
Spain and in Italy ; and as to the latter, if James 1. 
had been an Elizabeth, I have no doubt at all that 
Venice would have publicly declared itself against 
Eome. It is a profound question to answer, why it 
is, that since the middle of the sixteenth century the 
Reformation has not advanced one step in Europe. 



In the time of Leo X. atheism, or infidelity of 
some sort, was almost universal in Italy amongst the 
high dignitaries of the Eomish chui'ch. 



July 26, 1830. 
ThelwalL— Swift,— Stella. 

JOHN THELWALL had sometliing very good 
about him. We were once sitting in a beautiful 
recess in the Quantocks, when I said to him, ^^ Citizen 
John, tb"s is a fine place to talk treason in ! '^ — 
^'^Nay! Citizen Samuel,^" replied he, ^^it is rather a 
place to make a man forget that there is any necessity 
for treason!" 

ThelwaU. thought it very unfair to influence a child^s 
mind by inculcating any opinions before it should 
have come to years of discretion, and be able to choose 
for itself. I showed him my garden, and told him it 
was my botanical garden. ^^How so?" said he, ^^it 
is covered with weeds." — ^^ Oh," I replied, " that is 
only because it has not yet come to its age of discre- 
tion and choice. The weeds, you see, have taken 
the liberty to grow, and I thought it unfair in me to 
prejudice the soil towards roses and strawberries." 



106 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

I think Swift adopted the name of Stella^ which is 
a man^s name^ with a feminine termination^ to denote 
the mysterious epicene relation in wliich poor Miss 
Johnston stood to liim. 



July 28, 1830. 

Iniquitous Legislation. 

THAT legislation is iniquitous which sets law in 
conflict with the common and unsophisticated 
feehngs of our nature. If I were a clergyman in a 
smuggling town^ I would not preach against smug- 
gling. I would not be made a sort of clerical revenue 
officer. Let the government^, which by absurd duties 
fosters smugglings prevent it itseK^ if it can. How 
could I show my hearers the immorality of going 
twenty miles in a boat^ and honestly buying with 
their money a keg of brandy^ except by a long deduc- 
tion wliich they could not understand ? But were I 
in a place where wrecking went on, see if I would 
preach on anything else ! 



July 29, 1830. 

Spurzheim and Craniology. 

SPUEZHEIM is a good man^ and I like liim ; but 
he is dense, and the most ignorant German I 
ever knew. If he had been content with stating 
certain remarkable coincidences between the moral 
qualities and the configuration of the skull, it would 
have been weU ; but when he began to map out the 
cranium dogmatically, he fell into infinite absurdities. 
You know that every intellectual act, however you 
may distinguish it by name in respect of the origi- 



SPUHZIIEIM AND CHANIOLOGY. 107 

iiating faculties_, is truly the act of the entire man; 
the notion of distinct material organs^ therefore, in 
the brain itself, is plainly absurd. Pressed by this, 
Spui'zheim has,, at length, been guilty of some sheer 
quackery; and ventures to say that he has actually 
discovered a different material in the different parts 
or organs of the brain, so that he can tell a piece of 
benevolence from a bit of destructiveness and so forth. 
Observe, also, that it is constantly found, that so far 
from there being a conca\dty in the interior surface 
of the cranium answering to the convexity apparent 
on the exterior — the interior is convex too. Dr. 
Baillie thought there was sometliing in the system, 
because the notion of the brain being an extendible 
net helped to explain those cases where the intellect 
remained after the sohd substance of the brain was 
dissolved in water. ^ 

That a greater or less development of the forepart 
of the head is generally coincident Avith more or less 
of reasoning power, is certain. The line across the 
forehead, also, denoting musical power, is very 
common. 

* " The very marked, positive as well ad comparative, magnitude and 
prominence of the hump, entitled lenevole-nce (see Spiirzheim's map of tfie 
Tinman sJcuU) on the head of the late Mr. John Thiirtell, has woefully un- 
settled the faith of many ardent phrenologists, and strengthened the pre- 
\'ious doubts of a still greater number into utter disbelief. On m7j mind this 
fact (for a fact it is) produced the directly contrary effect ; and inclined me 
to suspect, for the first time, that there may be some tnith in the Spurz- 
heimian scheme. Whether future craniologists may not see cause to new- 
7iame this and one or two others of these convex gnomons, is quite a different 
question. At present, and according to the present use of words, any such 
change would be premature ; and we must be content to say, that Mr. 
Thurtell's benevolence was insufficiently modified by the unprotrusive and 
unindicated convolutes of the brain, that secrete honesty and common sense. 
The organ of destructiveness was indirectly potentiated by the absence or 
imperfect development of the glands of reason and conscience in this ' unfor- 
tunate gentleman' " — Aids to Befiection, p. 143, n. 



108 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

August 20, 1830, 

French Revolution^ IS^O.— Captain JB, Hall and the Americans, 
T^HE Frencli must have greatly improved under 

-■- the influence of a free and regular government 
(for such it, in general, has been since the restoration), 
to have conducted themselves with so much modera- 
tion in success as they seem to have done, and to be 
disposed to do. 

I must say I cannot see much in Captain B. Hallos 
account of the Americans, but weaknesses — some of 
which make me like the Yankees all the better. How 
much more amiable is the American fidgettiness and 
anxiety about the opinion of other nations, and espe- 
cially of the English; than the John Bullism, which 
affects to despise the sentiments of the rest of the 
world.* 

* '' There exists in England a gentlemanly character, a gentlemanly feeling, 
verj'- different even from that which is the most like it, — the character of a 
well-born Spaniard ; and unexampled in the rest of Europe. This feeling 
originated in the fortunate circumstance, that the titles of our English 
nobility follow the law of their property, and are inherited by the eldest 
sons only. From this source, under the influences of our constitution and of 
our astonishing trade, it has diffused itself in different modifications through 
the whole country. The uniformity of our dress among all classes above 
that of the day labourer, while it has authorised all ranks to assume the 
appearance of gentlemen, has at the same time inspired the wish to con- 
form their manners, and still more their ordinary actions in social inter- 
course, to their notions of the gentlemanly; the most commonly received 
attribute of which character is a certain generosity in trifles. On the other 
hand, the encroachments of the lower classes on the higher, occasioned and 
favoured by this resemblance in exteriors, by this absence of any cognizable 
marks of distinction, have rendered each class more reserved and jealous in 
their general communion ; and, far more than our climate or natural temper, 
have caused that haughtiness and reserve in our outward demeanour, which 
is so generally complained of among foreigners. Far be it from me to de- 
preciate the value of this gentlemanly feeling: I respect it under all its 
forms and varieties, from the House of Commons * to the gentleman in the 
one-shilling gallery. It is always the ornament of virtue, and oftentimes a 
support ; but it is a wretched substitute for it. Its uwrth, as a moral good, is 
by no means in proportion to its value as a social advantage. These obser- 



This was written long before the Reform Act.— Ed. 



ENGLISH EEFOR^rATIOX. 109 

As to what Captain Hall says about the English 
loyalty to the person of the King — I can only say^ I 
feel none of it. I respect the man while^ and oiily 
wliile, the king is translucent through liim : I 
reverence the glass case for the Saint^s sake Avitliin; 
except for that^ it is to me mere giazier^s work^ — 
patty^ and glass^ and wood. 



September 8, 1830. 
English Reformation, 

THE fatal error into wliich the peculiar character 
of the English Eeformation thi-ew our church, 
has borne bitter fiiiit ever since, — I mean that of its 
clinging to court and state, instead of cultivating the 
people. The chui'ch ought to be a mediator between 
the people and the government_^ between the poor 
and the rich. As it is, I fear the church has let the 
hearts of the common people be stolen from it. See 
how differently the Church of Eome — ^wiser in its 
generation — has always acted in this particulai'. Eor a 
long time past the Church of England seems to me to 
have been bhghted with prudence, as it is called. I wish 
with all my heart we had a little zealous imprudence. 

rations are not irrelevant : for to the want of reflection that this diffusion of 
gentlemanly feeling among us is not the gi-oirth of our moral excellence, but 
the effect of various accidental advantages peculiar to England ; to our not 
considering that it is unreasonable and uncharitable to expect the same 
consequences, -where the same causes have not existed to produce them ; and 
lastly, to our proneness to regard the absence of this character (which, as I 
have before said, does, for the greater part, and in the common apprehension, 
consist in a certain frankness and generosity in the detail of action) as 
decisive against the sum total of personal or national -vrorth : we must, I am 
convinced, attribute a large portion of that conduct, which in many instances 
has left the inhabitants of countries conquered or appropriated by Great 
Britain doubtful whether the various solid advantages which they have 
derived from our protection and just government were not bought dearly by 
the wounds inflicted on their feelings and prejudices, by the contemptuous and 
insolent demeanour of the English, as individuals." — Friend, vol. iii., p. 322. 



110 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

September 19, 1830. 
Democracy. — Idea of a State, — Church, 

TT has never yet been seen^ or clearly annoimced^ 
-■- that democracy^ as such^ is no proper element in 
the constitution of a state. The idea of a state is 
undoubtedly a government e/c tQ>v apiaro^v — an aris- 
tocracy. Democracy is the healthful life-blood which 
circulates through the veins and arteries^, which sup- 
ports the system,, but which ought never to appear 
externally^ and as the mere blood itseK. 

A state^ in idea^ is the opposite of a church. A 
state regards classes^ and not individuals; and it 
estimates classes^ not by internal merits but external 
accidents^ as property^ birth^ &c. But a church does 
the reverse of this^ and disregards all external acci- 
dents^ and looks at men as individual persons^ allow- 
ing no gradation of ranks^ but such as greater or less 
wisdom, learning, and hoHness ought to confer. A 
church is, therefore, in idea, the only pure democracy. 
The church, so considered, and the state, exclusively 
of the church, constitute together the idea of a state 
in its largest sense. 



September 20, 1830. 
Government. — French Gend^armerie. 

A LL temporal government must rest on a com- 
-^ promise of interests and abstract rights. Wlio 
would Usten to the county of Bedford, if it were to 
declare itself disannexed from the British empire, and 
to set up for itself ? . 

The most desirable thing that can happen to 



PHILOSOPHY OF YOUNG MEN. Ill 

France, ^nth her inunense army of gensd^armes, is, 
that the ser^dce may at first become very irksome to 
the men themselves, and ultimately, by not being 
called into real service, fall into general ridicule, like 
our trained bands. The e^il in France, and through- 
out Europe, seems now especially to be, the subordi- 
nation of the legislative power to the direct physical 
force of the people. The French legislature was weak 
enough before the late revolution ; now it is absolutely 
powerless, and manifestly depends even for its exist- 
ence on the ^dll of a popular commander of an irre- 
sistible army. There is now in France a daily 
tendency to reduce the legislative body to a mere 
deputation from the provinces and towns. 



September 21, 1830. 
Philosophy of Young Men at the present Day. 

I DO not know whether I deceive myself, but it 
seems to me that the young men, who were my 
contemporaries, fixed certain principles in their minds, 
and followed them out to their legitimate consequences, 
in a way wliich I rarely witness now. No one seems 
to have any distinct convictions, right or wrong ; the 
mind is completely at sea, roHing and pitching on 
the waves of facts and personal experiences. Mr. 

is, I suppose, one of the rising young men of 

the day ; yet he went on talking, the other evening, 
and making remarks with great earnestness, some of 
wliich were palpably irreconcilable with each other. 
He told me that facts gave bhth to, and were the 
absolute ground of, principles ; to which I said, that 
unless he had a principle of selection, he would not 



112 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

have taken notice of those facts upon which he 
grounded his principle. You must have a lantern in 
your hand to give lights otherwise all the materials in 
the world are useless, for you cannot find them ; and 
if you could, you could not arrange them. *^^But 

then/^ said Mr. , '^ that principle of selection 

came from facts V — ^^To be sure V I repHed; ^^but 
there must have been again an antecedent light to see 
those antecedent facts. The relapse may be carried 
in imagination backwards for ever, — but go back as 
you may, you cannot come to a man without a pre- 
vious aim or principle."^^ He then asked me what 
I had to say to Bacon^s induction : I told him I had 
a good deal to say, if need were; but that it was 
perhaps enough for the occasion to remark, that what 
he was evidently taking for the Baconian mduction 
was mere ^^duction — a very different thing.* 



September 22, 1830. 
Thucydides and Tacitus. — Poetry, — Modern Metre, 

THE object of Thucydides was to show the ills 
resulting to Greece from the separation and con- 
flict of the spirits or elements of democracy and 
oHgarchy. The object of Tacitus was to demonstrate 
the desperate consequences of the loss of liberty on 
the minds and hearts of men. 



A poet ought not to pick nature^s pocket : let him 
borrow, and so borrow as to repay by the very act of 
borrowing. Examine nature accurately, but write 

* As far as I can judge, the most complete and masterly thing ever done 
by Mr. Coleridge in prose, is the analysis and reconcilement of the Platonic 
and Baconian methods of philosophy, contained in the third volume of the 
Friend, from p. 176 to 216. No edition of the Novum Organum should ever 
be published without a transcript of it. — Ed. 



LOGIC. 113 

from recollection : and trust more to your imagination 
than to your memory. 

Eeally tlie metre of some of the modern poems I 
have read^ bears about the same relation to metre 
properly understood, that dumb bells do to music ; 
both are for exercise, and pretty severe too, I tliink. 

Nothing ever left a stain on that gentle creature^s 
mind, which looked upon the degraded men and 
things around liim like moonsliine on a dunghill, 
which shines and takes no pollution. All tilings 
are shadows to him, except those which move his 
affections. 



September 23, 1830. 

Logic. 

n^HEEE are two kinds of logic: 1. Syllogistic. 
-■- 2. Criterional. How any one can by any spin- 
ning make out more than ten or a dozen pages about 
the first, is inconceivable to me; all those absurd 
forms of syllogisms are one half pure sophisms, and 
the other half mere forms of rhetoric. 

All syllogistic logic is — 1. y^^clusion ; 2. 7;^clusionj 
3. C(9?^clusion j which answer to the understanding, 
the experience, and the reason. The first says, this 
ought to be ; the second adds this is ; and the last 
pronounces, this must be so. The criterional logic, 
or logic of premisses, is, of course, much the most 
important ; and it has never yet been treated. 



The object of rhetoric is persuasion, — of logic, 
conviction, — of grammar, significancy. A fourth 
term is wanting, the rhematic, or logic of sentences. 



114 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

September 24, 1830. 
Varro. — Socrates. — Greeh Pldlosojphy. — Plotinus. — TertuUian. 

TT7HAT a loss we have had in Yarrows mythological 
' ' and critical works ! It is said that the works 
of Epicurus are probably amongst the Herculanean 
manuscripts. I do not feel much interest about them, 
because,, by the consent of all antiquity, Lucretius has 
preserved a complete view of his system. But I 
regret the loss of the works of the old Stoics^ Zeno 
and others, exceedingly. 

Socrates, as such, was only a poetical character to 
Plato, who worked upon his own ground. The several 
disciples of Socrates caught some particular points 
from him, and made systems of philosophy upon them 
according to their own views. Socrates himseK had 
no system. 

I hold all claims set up for Egypt having given 
birth to the Greek philosophy, to be groundless. It 
sprang up in Greece itself, and began with physics 
only. Then it took in the idea of a living cause, and 
made pantheism out of the two. Socrates introduced 
ethics, and taught duties; and then, finally, Plato 
asserted or re-asserted the idea of a God the maker of 
the world. The measure of human philosophy was 
thus fuU, when Christianity came to add what before 
was wanting — assurance. After this agaiu, the Neo- 
Platonists joined theurgy with philosophy, which 
ultimately degenerated into magic and mere mysticism. 



Plotinus was a man of wonderful ability, and some 
of the sublunest passages I ever read are in his works. 



SCOTCH AND ENGLISH LxVKES. 115 

I was amused the other day with reading in Ter- 
tuUian, that spirits or demons dilate and contract 
themselves^ and wriggle about like worms — lumhricis 
similes. 



September 26, 1830. 
Scotch and English Lakes, 

THE five &iest tilings in Scotland are — 1. Edin- 
burgh; 2. The antechamber of the Eall of 
Eoyers; 3. The view of Loch Lomond from Inch 
Tavannach^ the highest of the islands; 4. The Tro- 
sachs; 5. The view of the Hebrides from a pointy 
the name of wliich I forget. But the intervals be- 
tween the fine things in Scotland are very dreary ; — 
whereas in Cumberland and Westmoreland there is a 
cabinet of beauties^ — each thing being beautiful in 
itself, and the very passage from one lake^ mountain, 
or valley^ to another^ is itseK a beautiful thing again. 
The Scotch lakes are so hke one another^ from their 
great size, that in a picture you are obhged to read 
their names ; but the English lakes^ especially Derwent 
Water, or rather the whole vale of Keswick, is so 
rememberable, that, after having been once seen, no 
one ever requires to be told what it is when dra\vn. 
This vale is about as large a basin as Loch Lomond ; 
the latter is covered with water ; but in the former 
instance, we have two lakes, with a charming river to 
connect them, and lovely tillages at the foot of the 
mountain, and other habitations, which give an air of 
life and cheerfuLiess to the whole place. 



The land imagery of the north of Devon is most 
delightful. 



116 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

September 27, 1830. 

Love and Friendship opposed. — Marriage, — Characterlessness 
of Women. 

A PEfiSON once said to me^ that lie could make 
-^ nothing of love^ except that it was friendship 
accidentally combined Avith desire. Whence I con- 
cluded that he had never been in love. Tor what 
shall we say of the feeling which a man of sensibility 
has towards his wife with her baby at her breast ! 
How pure from sensual desire ! yet how different from 
friendship ! 

Sympathy constitutes friendship ; but in love there 
is a sort of antipathy^ or opposing passion. Each 
strives to be the other, and both together make up 
one whole. 

Luther has sketched the most beautiful picture of 
the nature, and ends, and duties of the wedded life I 
ever read. St. Paul says it is a great symbol, not 
mystery, as we translate it.* 



'' Most women have no character at all,^^ said Pope,t 
and meant it for satire. Shakspeare, who knew man 
and woman much better, saw that it, in fact, was the 
perfection of woman to be characterless. Every one 
wishes a Desdemona or Ophelia for a wife, — creatures 
who, though they may not always understand you, do 
gilways feel you, and feel with you. 

*. K«/ SfTovrect ot ^Co ilg ffcc^'/cct. ^ioe^v. ro /ijcvtrrTi^iov rovro (jciy^ Itrriv' lyu Si 
^.iyeti 6;V "^la-TOv tcoc) iU rrjv IxxK'^a-iosv. Ephes., C. V.31, 32. 

t " Nothing so true as what you once let fall — 
' Most women have no character at all,' — 
Matter too soft a lasting mark to bear, 
And best distinguish'd by black, brown, and fair." 

Epist. to a Lady^ v. 1. 



ENGLISH LITURGY. 117 



September 28, 1830. 

Mental Anarchy. 

WHY need we talk of a fiery hell ? If the w\\[, 
which is the law of our nature^ w^ere with- 
drawn from our memory^ fancy^ understandings and 
reason^ no other hell could equals for a sphitual beings 
what we should then feel, from the anarchy of our 
powers. It would be conscious madness — a horrid 
thought ! 



October 5, 1830. 

Ear and Taste for Music Different. — English Liturgy. — Belgian 
Revolution. 

IjST pohtics, what begins in fear usually ends in 
foUy. 

An ear for music is a very different thing from a 
taste for music. I have no ear whatever; I could 
not sing an air to save my life ; but I have the in- 
tensest dehght in music, and can detect good from 
bad. IN'aldi, a good feUoAv, remarked to me once at 
a concert, that I did not seem much interested with 
a piece of Eossini^s which had just been performed. 
I said, it sounded to me like nonsense verses. But 
I could scarcely contaiu myseK when a thing of 
Beethoven'^s followed. 

I never distinctly felt the heavenly superiority of 
the prayers in the English liturgy, till I had attended 
some kirks in the country parts of Scotland. 



I call these strings of school boys or girls which 
we meet near London — walking advertisements. 



118 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

The Brussels riot — I cannot bring myseK to dignify 
it with, a liigher name — is a wretched parody on the 
last French revolution. Were I King William^ I 
would banish the Belgians^ as Coriolanus banishes 
the Eomans in Shakspeare.* It is a wicked rebellion 
without one just cause. 



October 8,1830. 
Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon, 

GALILEO was a great genius^ and so was Newton; 
but it would take two or three Galileos and 
Newtons to make one Kepler, f It is in the order of 
Providence^ that the inventive^ generative^ constitu- 
tive mind — the Kepler — should come first ; and then 
that the patient and collective mind — the Newton — 
should follow^ and elaborate the pregnant queries and 
illumining guesses of \hQ former. The laws of the 
planetary system are, in fact, due to Kepler. There 
is not a more glorious acliievement of scientific genius 
upon record, than Kepler^s guesses, prophecies, and 
ultimate apprehension of the law | of the mean dis- 
tances of the planets as connected with the periods of 
their revolutions round the sun. Gravitation, too, 
he had fuUy conceived ; but, because it seemed in- 
consistent with some received observations on Hght, 

* " You common cry of curs ! whose breath I hate 
As reek o' the rotten fens, whose loves I prize 
As the dead carcasses of unburied men 
That do corrupt my air, I banish you ; 
And here remain with your uncertainty I " 

Act iii. sc. 3. 
t G-alileo Galilei was bom at Pisa, on the 15th of February, 1564. John 
Kepler was born at Weil, in the duchy of Wirtemberg, on the 21st of 
December, 1571. — Ed. 

X Namely, that the squares of their times vary as the cubes of their 
distances. — Ed. 



THE REFORMATION. ] 19 

he gave it up, in allegiance, as he says, to Nature. 
Yet the idea vexed and haunted liis mind ; ^^ Vexai 
me et lacessitj^ are his words, I believe. 



We praise Newton^s clearness and steadiness. He 
was clear and steady, no doubt, wliilst working out, 
by the help of an admirable geometry, the idea brought 
forth by another, Newton had his ether, and could 
not rest in — he could not conceive — the idea of a 
law. He thought it a physical thing after aU. As 
for liis chronology, T believe, those, who are most 
competent to judge, rely on it less and less every day. 
His lucubrations on Daniel and the Revelations seem 
to me httle less than mere raving. 

Personal experiment is necessary, in order to correct 
our own observation of the experiments wliich Nature 
herself makes for us — I mean, the phenomena of the 
universe. But then observation is, in turn, wanted 
to direct and substantiate the course of experiment. 
Experiments alone cannot advance knowledge, with- 
out observation; they amuse for a time, and then 
pass off the scene and leave no trace behind them. 

Bacon, when like himseK — for no man was ever 
more inconsistent — says, ^^Prudens qucestio — dmiidkim 
scientia est!' 



October 20, 1830. 
Tlie Reformation, 

AT the Eeformation, the first reformers were beset 
with, an almost morbid anxiety not to be con- 
sidered heretical in point of doctrine. They knew 
that the Romanists were on the watch to fasten the 



120 Coleridge's table talk. 

brand of heresy upon them whenever a fair pretext 
could be found ; and I have no doubt it was the 
excess of this fear which at once led to the burning 
of Servetus^ and also to the thanks offered by aU the 
Protestant Churches^ to Calvin and the Church of 
Geneva^ for burning him. 



November 21, 1830. 
House of Commons, 

never makes a figure in quietude. He astounds 

the vulgar with a certain enormity of exertion; he 
takes an acre of canvass^ on which he scrawls every- 
thing. He thinks aloud; every tiling in his mind, 
good, bad, or indifferent, out it comes ; he is hke the 
Newgate gutter, flowing with garbage, dead dogs, and 
mud. He is pre-eminently a man of many thoughts, 
with no ideas : hence he is always so lengthy, because 
he must go through everything to see anything. 

It is a melancholy thing to Kve when there is no 
vision in the land. Where are our statesmen to meet 
tliis emergency ? I see no reformer who asks himself 
the question, TTJiat is it that I propose to myseK to 
effect in the result ? 

Is the House of Commons to be re-constructed on 
the principle of a representation of interests, or of a 
delegation of men ? If on the former, we may, per- 
haps, see our way ; if on the latter, you can never, 
in reason, stop short of universal suffrage; and in 
that case, I am sure that women have as good a right 
to vote as men.^-^^ 

* In Mr. Coleridge's masterly analysis and confatation of the physiocratic 
system of the early French revolutionists, in the Friend, he has the following 
passage in the nature of a reductio ad absurdum, '' Rousseau, indeed, asserts 



GOVERNMENT. 121 



March 20, 1831. 
Government. — Earl Grey. 

GOVEET\ jMENT is not founded on property, taken 
merely as such, in the abstract ; it is founded 
on ^meqiial property ; the inequaHty is an essential 
term in the position. The phrases — liigher, middle, 
and lower classes, with reference to this point of 
representation — are delusive; no such divisions as 

that there is an inalienable sovereignty inherent in eveiy human being 
possessed of reason ; and from this the framers of the Constitution of 1791 
deduce, that the people itself is its own sole rightful legislator, and at most 
dare only recede so far from its right as to delegate to chosen deputies the 
power of representing and declaring the general will. But this is wholly 
without proof; for it has been already fully shown, that, according to the 
principle out of which this consequence is attempted to be drawn, it is not the 
actual man, but the abstract reason alone, that is the sovereign and rightful 
lawgiver. The confusion of two things so different is so gross an error, that 
the Constituent Assembly could scarce proceed a step in their declaration of 
rights, without some glaring inconsistency. Children are excluded from all 
political power ; are they not human beings in whom the faculty of reason 
resides ? Yes ! but in them the faculty is not yet adequately developed. 
But are not gross ignorance, inveterate superstition, and the habitual 
tyranny of passion and sensuality, equally preventives of the development, 
equally impediments to the rightful exercise, of the reason, as childhood and 
early youth? Who would not rely on the judgment of a well-educated 
English lad, bred in a virtuous and enlightened family, in preference to that 
of a brutal Russian, who believes that he can scourge his wooden idol into 
good humour, or attributes to himself the merit of perpetual prayer, when he 
has fastened the petitions, which his priest has written for him, on the wings 
of a windmill ? Again : women are likewise excluded ; a full half, and that 
assuredly the most innocent, the most amiable half, of the whole human race 
is excluded, and this too by a Constitution which boasts to have no other 
foundations but those of universal reason ! Is reason, then, an affair of sex ? 
Ko ! but women are commonly in a state of dependence, and are not likely to 
exercise their reason with freedom. Well! and does not this ground of 
exclusion apply with equal or greater force to the poor, to the infirm, to men 
in embarrassed circumstances, to all, in short, whose maintenance, be it 
scanty, or be it ample, depends on the will of others ? How far are we to 
go ? WTiere must we stop ? What classes should we admit ? Whom must 
we disfranchise ? The objects concerning whom we are to determine these 
questions, are all human beings, and differenced from each other by degrees 
only, these degrees, too, oftentimes changing. Yet the principle on which 
the whole system rests, is that reason is not susceptible of degree. Nothing, 
therefore, which subsists wholly in degrees, the changes of which do net obey 
any necessary law, can be the object of pirre science, or determinable by 
mere reason."— ^Yol. i., p. 341. Ed. 



12^ COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

classes actually exist in society. There is an indis- 
soluble blending and interfusion of persons from top 
to bottom ; and no man can trace a line of separation 
through them^ except such a confessedly unmeaning 
and unjustifiable line of political empiricism as 10/. 
householders. I cannot discover a ray of principle in 
the government plan^ — not a hint of the effect of the 
change upon the balance of the estates of the realm^ 
— not a remark on the nature of the constitution of 
England^ and the character of the property of so many 
miUions of its inhabitants. HaK the wealth of this 
country is purely artificial^ — existing only in and on 
the credit given to it by the integrity and honesty of 
the nation. Tliis property appears^ in many instances, 
a heavy burthen to the numerical majority of the 
people, and they beheve that it causes all their dis- 
tress : and they are now to have the maintenance of 
this property com m itted to their good faith — the 
lamb to the wolves ! 

Necker, you remember, asked the people to come 
and help liim against the aristocracy. The people 
came fast enough at his bidding,; but, somehow or 
other^ they would not go away again when they had 
done their work. I hope Lord Grey will not see 
himseK or liis friends in the woeful case of the conju- 
ror, who, with infinite zeal and pains, called up the 
devils to do something for him. They came at the 
word, thronging about him, grinning, and howhng, 
and dancincf, and wliiskino; their long; tails in diaboHc 
glee j but when they asked him what he wanted of 
them, the poor wretch, frightened out of his wits, 
could only stammer forth, — ^^ I pray you, my friends. 



GOVERNMENT. 123 



be gone down again 1^" At wliich the devils^ with 
one voice^ rephed^ — 

" Yes ! yes ! we '11 go down ! we '11 go down ! — 
But we '11 take you with us to swim or to drown ! " * 



June 25, 1831. 
Government. — Popular Representation. 
nnHE tliree great ends wliich a statesman ought to 
J- propose to liimself in the government of a nation, 
are, — 1. Security to possessors; 2. PaciHty to ac- 
quirers; and, 3. Hope to all. 



A nation is the unity of a people. King and par- 
liament are the unity made visible. The king and 
the peers are as integral portions of this manifested 
unity as the commons. t 

* Mr. Coleridge must have been thinking of that " very pithy and profit- 
able " ballad by the Laureate,, wherein is shown how a young man '' would 
read unlawful books, and how he was punished : " — 
" The young man, he began to read 

He knew not what, but he Avould proceed, 

When there was heard a sound at the door, 

WTiich as he read on grew more and more. 
" And more and more the knocking grew, 

The young man knew not what to do : 

But trembling in fear he sat within, 

Till the door was broke, and the devil came in, 
" ' What would' st thou with me ? ' the wicked one cried ; 

But not a word the young man replied ; 

Every hair on his head was standing upright, 

And his limbs like a palsy shook with afi'right. 
" ' What would' st thou with me ? ' cried the author of ill ; 

But the wretched yomig man was silent still," &c. 

The catastrophe is very terrible, and the moral, though addressed by the 
poet to young men only, is quite as applicable to old men, as the times show. 
" Henceforth let all young men take heed 
How in a conjuror's books they read ! " 

Southey's Minor Poerns, vol. iii. p. 92. — Ed. 
t Mr. Coleridge was very fond of quoting George Withers's fine lines : — 
" Let not your king and parliament in one, 
Much less apart, mistake themselves for that 



124 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TxlLK. 

In that imperfect state of society in which, onr 
system of representation began^ the interests of the 
country were pretty exactly commensurate with its 
municipal divisions. The counties^ the towns^ and 
the seaports^ accurately enough represented the only 
interests then existing ; that is to say^ — the landed^ 
the shop-keeping or manufacturings and the mercan- 
tile. But for a century past, at leasts this division 
has become notoriously imperfect, some of the most 
vital interests of the empire being now totally uncon- 
nected with any Engnsh locaHties. Yet now^ when 
the evil and the want are known, we are to abandon 
the accommodations which the necessity of the case 
had worked out for itself, and begin again with 
a rigidly territorial plan of representation ! The 
miserable tendency of all is to destroy our nationahty, 
which consists, in a principal degree, in our represen- 
tative government, and to convert it into a degrading 
delegation of the populace. There is no unity for a 
people but in a representation of national interests ; 
a delegation from the passions or wishes of the 
individuals themselves is a rope of sand. 

Undoubtedly it is a great evil, that there should be 
such an evident discrepancy between the law and the 
practice of the constitution in the matter of the 
representation. Such a direct, yet clandestine, con- 

Whicli is most worthy to be thought upon : 

Nor think they are, essentially, The State. 

Let them not fancy that th' authority 

And privileges upon them hestoMTi, 

Conferr'd are to set up a majesty, 

A power, or a glory, of their own ! 

But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life, 

Which they hut represent — 

That there 's on earth a yet auguster thing, 

Veil'd though it he, than parliament and king ! "—Ed. 



NAPIErx. BUONAPARTE. 125 

travention of solemn resolutions and established laws 
is immoral^ and greatly injurious to the cause of legal 
loyalty and general subordination in the minds of the 
people. But then a statesman should consider that 
these very contraventions of law in practice point out 
to him the places in the body politic wliich need a 
remodelling of the law. You acknowledge a certain 
necessity for indirect representation in the present 
day^ and that such representation has been instinc- 
tively obtained by means contrary to law ; why then 
do you not approximate the useless law to the useful 
practice^ instead of abandoning -both law and practice 
for a completely new system of your own ? 

The malignant duplicity and unprincipled tergiver- 
sations of the specific Whig newspapers are to me 
detestable. I prefer tlie open endeavours of those 
pubhcations which seek to destroy the chuiTh,, and 
introduce a republic in effect : there is a sort of 
honesty m t/iat which I approve^ thougli I would with. 
joy lay down my Hfe to save my country from the 
consummation which is so evidently desired by that 
section of the periodical press. 



June 26, 1831. 
Napier. — Buonaparte, — Southey, 

IHAA^E been exceedingly impressed with the evil 
precedent of Colonel ]Nrapier^s History of the Penin- 
sular TTar. It is a specimen of the true French 
military school ; not a thought for the justice of the 
war^ — not a consideration of the damnable and damn- 
ing iniquity of the French invasion. All is looked 
at as a mere game of exquisite skilly and the praise 



126 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

is regularly awarded to the most successful player. 
How perfectly ridiculous is the prostration of Napier^s 
mind^ apparently a pow^erful one^ before the name 
of Buonaparte ! I declare I know no book more 
likely to undermine the national sense of right and 
T\Tong in matters of foreign interference than this 
work of Napier^s. 

If A. has a hundred means of doing a certain thing, 
and B. has only one or two, is it very wonderful, or 
does it argue very transcendant superiority, if A. 
surpasses B. ? Buonaparte was the child of circum- 
stances, which he neither originated nor controlled. 
He had no chance of preserving his power but by 
continual warfare. No thought of a wise tranquil- 
lisation of the shaken elements of Prance seems ever 
to have passed through liis mind ; and I believe that 
at no part of his reign could he have survived one 
yearns continued peace. He never had but one ob- 
stacle to contend with — physical force; commonly 
the least difficult enemy a general, subject to courts- 
martial and courts of conscience, has to overcome. 

Southey^s History* is on the right side, and starts 
from the right point ; but he is personally fond of the 
Spaniards, and in bringing forward their nationahty 
in the prominent manner it deserves, he does not, in 
my judgment, state with sufficient clearness the truth, 
that the nationality of the Spaniards was not founded 
on any just ground of good government or wise laws, 
but was, in fact, very Httle more than a rooted an- 
tipathy to all strangers as such. In this sense every- 

* Mr. Coleridge said that the conchision of this great work was the finest 
specimen of historic eulogy he had ever read in English ; — that it was more 
than a campaign to the duke's fame. — Ed. 



OLD WOMEN. 127 



tliiug is national in Spain. Even their so-called 
Catholic religion is exclusively national in a genuine 
Spaniarcrs mind; he does not regard the religious 
professions of the Frenchman or Itahan at all in the 
same light with his own. 



July 7, 1831. 
Patronage of the Fine Arts. — Old Women, 

n^HE darkest despotisms on the Continent have 
-^ done more for the growth and elevation of the 
fine arts than the English government. A great 
musical composer in Germany and Italy is a great 
man in society, and a real dignity and rank are 
universally conceded to liim. So it is with a sculp- 
tor, or painter, or architect. "Without this sort of 
encouragement and patronage such arts as music and 
painting will never come into great eminence. In 
this country there is no general reverence for the fine 
arts; and the sordid spirit of a money-amassing plii- 
losophy would meet any proposition for the fostering 
of art, in a genial and extended sense, with the 
commercial maxim, — Laissezfaire. Paganini, indeed, 
wiU make a fortune, because he can actually sell the 
tones of liis fiddle at so much a scrape ; but Mozart 
liimself might have languished in a garret for any- 
thing that would have been done for him here. 



There are three classes into which all the women 
past seventy that ever I knew were to be divided : — 
1. That dear old soul; 2. That old woman; 3. That 
old witch. 



128 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

July 24, 1831. 

Pictures* 

OBSERYE the remarkable difference between Claude 
and Teniers in tbeir power of painting vacant 
space. Claude makes his whole landscape d^jolenum: 
the air is quite as substantial as any other part of the 
scene. Hence there are no true distances^ and every- 
thing presses at once and equally upon the eye. There 
is sometliing close and almost suffocating in the 
atmosphere of some of Claude^'s sunsets. Never did 
any one paint air^ the thin air^ the absolutely appa- 
rent vacancy between object and object^ so admirably 
as Teniers. That picture of the Archers f exemphfies 
this excellence. See the distances between those ugly 
louts ! how perfectly true to the fact ! 

* All the following remarks in this section were made at the exhibition of 
ancient masters at the British G-allery in Pall Mall. The recollection of 
those two hours has made the rooms of that Institution a melancholy place 
for me. Mr. Coleridge was in high spirits, and seemed to kindle in his 
mind at the contemplation of the splendid pictures before him. He did not 
examine them all by the catalogue, but anchored himself before some three 
or four great works, telling me that he saw the rest of the Gallery potentially. 
I can yet distinctly recall him, half leaning on his old simple stick, and his 
hat off in one hand, whilst with the fingers of the other he went on, as was 
his constant wont, figuring in the air a commentary of small diagrams, 
wherewith, as he fancied, he could translate to the eye those relations of 
form and space which his words might fail to convey with clearness to the 
ear. His admiration for Rubens showed itself in a sort of joy and brotherly 
fondness ; he looked as if he would shake hands with his pictures. What 
tlie company, which by degrees formed itself round this silver-haired, 
bright-eyed, music-breathing old man, took him for, I cannot guess ; there 
was probably not one there who knew him to be that Ancient Mariner, who 
held people with his glittering eye, and constrained them, like three years' 
children, to hear his tale. In the midst of his speech, he turned to the right 
hand, where stood a very lovely young woman, whose attention he had 
involuntarily arrested ; — to her, without apparently any consciousness of her 
being a stranger to him, he addressed many remarks, although I must 
acknowledge they were couched in a somewhat softer tone, as if he were 
soliciting her sympathy. He was, verily, a gentle-hearted man at all times ; 
but I never was in company with him in my life, when the entry of a 
woman, it mattered not who, did not provoke a dim gush of emotion, which 
passed like an infant's breath over the mirror of his intellect. — Ed. 

t " Figures shooting at a Target," belonging, I believe, to Lord Bandon. 
—Ed. 



PICTURES. 129 



But oh ! what a wonderful picture is that Triumph 
of Silenus ! * It is the very reveby of hell. Every 
exH passion is there that could in any way be forced 
into juxtaposition with joyance. Mark the lust^ and, 
hard by, the hate. Every part is pregnant with 
libidinous nature without one spark of the grace of 
Heaven. The animal is triumpliing — not over, but — 
in the absence, in the non-existence, of the spiritual 
part of man. I could fancy that Eubens had seen in 
a \ision — 

" All the souls that damned be 
Leap up at once in anarchy, 
Clap their hands and dance for glee ! " 

That landscape t on the other side is only less 
magnificent than dear Sir George Beaumont^s, now in 
the National Gallery. It has the same charm. Eubens 
does not take for his subjects grand or novel con- 
formations of objects ; he has, you see, no precipices, 
no forests, no fi'owning castles, — nothing that a poet 
would take at aU times, and a painter take in these 
times. No ; he gets some Httle ponds, old tumble- 
down cottages, that ruinous chateau, two or three 
peasants, a hay-rick, and other such humble images, 
which looked at in and by themselves convey no 
pleasure and excite no surprise; but he — and he 
Peter Paul Rubens alone — handles these every-day 
ingredients of all common landscapes as they are 
handled in nature ; he throws them into a vast and 
magnificent whole, consisting of heaven and earth and 
aU things therein. He extracts the latent poetry out 
of these common objects, — that poetry and harmony 
which every man of genius perceives in the face of 

* This belongs to Sir Robert Peel.— Ed. 
t " Landscape with setting Sun,"— Lord Famborough's picture.— Ed. 

K 



130 Coleridge's table talk. 

nature^ and which many men of no genius are taught 
to perceive and feel after examining such a picture as 
this. In other landscape painters the scene is con- 
fined and as it were imprisoned; — ^in Rubens the 
landscape dies a natural death ; it fades away into the 
apparent infinity of space. 

So long as Eubens confines himself to space and 
outward figure — to the mere animal man with animal 
passions — he is, I may say, a god amongst painters. 
His satyrs, Silenuses, lions, tigers, and dogs, are 
almost godlike; but the moment he attempts any- 
thing involving or presuming the spiritual, his gods 
and goddesses. Ids nymphs and heroes, become beasts, 
absolute, unmitigated beasts. 

The Italian masters differ from the Dutch in this — 
that in their pictures ages are perfectly ideal. The 
infant that Eaffael^s Madonna holds in her arms cannot 
be guessed of any particular age ; it is Humanity in 
infancy. The babe ia the manger in a Dutch painting 
is a fac-simile of some real new-born bantUng ; it is 
just like the little rabbits we fathers have all seen 
with some dismay at first burst. 



Carlo Dolce''s representations of our Saviour are 
pretty, to be sure ; but they are too smooth to please 
me. His Christs are always in sugar-candy. 

That is a very odd and funny picture of the 
Connoisseurs at Some* by Reynolds. 

The more I see of modern pictures, the more I am 

* " Portraits of distinguished Connoisseurs painted at Rome," — belonging 
to Lord Burlington. — Ed. 



CHILLINGWORTH. 131 



convinced that the ancient art of painting is gone^ 
and sometliing substituted for it^ — very pleasing, but 
different, and different in kind and not in degree 
only. Portraits by the old masters, — take for example 
the pock-fritten lady by Cuj^,^ — are pictures of men 
and women : they fill, not merely occupy, a space ; 
they represent individuals, but individuals as t^-pes of 
a species. Modern portraits — a few by Jackson and 
Owen_, perhaps, excepted — give you not the man^ not 
the inward humanitj^, but merely the external mark^ 
that in which Tom is different from Bill. There is 
something affected and meretricious in the Snake in 
the Grass,t and such pictures, by Reynolds. 



July 25, 1831. 
ChilUngworth. — Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, and Italians, 
TT is now twenty years since I read Chillingworth^s 
^ book ; X but certainly it seemed to me that his 
main position, that the mere text of the Bible is the 
sole and exclusive ground of Cliristian faith and 
practice^ is quite untenable against the Romanists. 
It entirely destroys the conditions of a churchy of an 
authority residing in a rehgious community, and all 
that holy sense of brotherhood which is so sublime 
and consolatory to a meditative Christian. Had I 
been a Papist, I should not have wished for a more 
vanquishable opponent in controversy. I certainly 
believe Chillingworth to have been in some sense 

* I almost forget, but have some recollection that the allusion is to Mr. 
Heneage Finch's picture of a Lady with a Fan. — Ed. 

\ Sir Robert Peel's.— Ed. 

X " The Religion of Protestants a safe Way to Salvation ; or, an Answer to 
a Booke entitled ' :Mercy and Tnith ; or, Charity maintained by Catholicks,' 
which pretends to prove the contrary." 

k2 



132 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

a Socinian. Lord Falkland, his friend, said so in 
substance. I do not deny his skill in dialectics ; he 
was more than a match for Knott ^^ to be sure. 



I must be bold enough to say, that I do not tliink 
that even Hooker puts the idea of a church on the 
true foundation. 

The superstition of the peasantry and lower orders 
generally in Malta, Sicily, and Italy exceeds common 
belief. It is unlike the superstition of Spain, which 
is a jealous fanaticism, having reference to their 
Catholicism, and always glancing on heresy. The 
popular superstition of Italy is the offspring of the 
climate, the old associations, the manners, and the 
very names of the places. It is pure paganism, 
undisturbed by any anxiety about orthodoxy, or 
animosity against heretics. Hence, it is much more 
good-natured and pleasing to a traveller's feelings, 
and certainly not a whit less like the true religion 
of our dear Lord than the gloomy idolatry of the 
Spaniards. 

* Socinianism, or some inclination that -way, is an old and clinging charge 
against Chillingworth. On the one hand, it is well known that he subscrihed 
the articles of the Church of England, in the usual form, on the 20th of July, 
1638 ; and on the other, it is equally certain that within two years imme- 
diately previous, he wrote the letter to some unnamed correspondent, begin- 
ning " Dear Harry," and printed in all the Lives of Chilliugworth, in which 
letter he sums up his arguments upon the Arian doctrine in this passage : — 
" In a word, whosoever shall freely and impartially consider of this thing, 
and how on the other side the ancient fathers' weapons against the Arrians 
are in a manner only places of Scripture (and these now for the most part 
discarded as importunate and unconcluding), and how in the argument 
drawne from the authority of the ancient fathers, they are almost always 
defendants, and scarse ever opponents, he shall not choose hut confesse, or at 
least he very inclinable to heleeve, that the doctrine of Arrius is eyther a truth, or 
at least no damnable heresy T The truth is, however, that the Socinianism of 
Chillingworth, such as it may have been, had more reference to the doctrine 
of the redemption of man than of the being of God. 

Edward Knott's real name was Matthias Wilson. -Ed. 



ASGILL. 183 

I well remember^ when in Valetta in 1805^ asking 
a boy who waited on me^ what a certain procession^ 
then passings was^ and his answering with great 
quickness^ that it was Jesus Clmst^ who lives here {sta 
di casa qui), and when he comes out, it is in the 
shape of a wafer. But ^^ Eccelenza/^ said he, smiling 
and correcting himself, ^^non e Cristiano/^* 



July 30, 1831. 
AsgilL — The French. 

A SGILL was an extraordinary man, and his pamph- 
-^ lett is invaluable. He undertook to prove that 

* The following anecdote related by Mr. Coleridge, in April, 1811, was 
preserved and communicated to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge : — 

" As I was descending from Mount ^tna with a very lively talkative 
guide, we passed through a village (I think called) Nicolozzi, when the host 
happened to be passing through the street. Everyone was prostrate ; my 
guide became so ; and, not to be singular, I went down also. After resuming 
our journey, I observed in my guide an unusual seriousness and long silence, 
which, after many hums and Tiahs, was intemipted by a low bow, and leave 
requested to ask a question. This was of course granted, and the ensuing 
dialogue took place. Guide. " Signor, are you then a Christian ? " Coleridge. 
"I hope so." G. "What! are all Englishmen Christians?" C. "I hope 
and trust they are." G. " What ! are you not Turks ? Are you not damned 
eternally ? " C. " I trust not, through Christ." G. " What ! you believe in 
Christ then ? " C. " Certainly." This answer produced another long silence. 
At length my guide again spoke, still doubting the grand point of my 
Christianity. G. " I 'm thinking, Signor, what is the difference between 
you and us, that you are to be certainly damned?" C. "Nothing very 
material ; nothing that can prevent our both going to heaven, I hope. We 
believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost." G. (interrupting me) 
" Oh those damned priests ! what liars they are ! But (pausing) we can't do 
without them ; we can't go to heaven without them. But tell me, Signor, 
what are the differences ? " C. " Why, for instance, we do not worship the 
Virgin." G. "And why not, Signor?" C. "Because, though holy and 
pure, we think her still a woman, and, therefore, do not pay her the honour 
due to God." G. " But do you not worship Jesus, who sits on the right hand 
of God?" C. "We do." G. " Then why not worship the Virgin, who sits 
on the left?" C. " I did not know she did. If you can show it me in the 
Scriptures, I shall readily agree to worship her." " Oh," said my man, with 
uncommon triumph, and cracking his fingers, " sicuro, Signor ! sicuro, 
Signor ! " — Ed. 

t " An argument proving, that, according to the covenant of eternal life, 
revealed in the Scriptures, man may he translated from hence, without pass- 



134 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

man is literally immortal ; or, rather, that any given 
li\dng man might probably never die. He complains 
of the cowardly practice of dying. He was expelled 
from two Houses of Commons for blasphemy and 
atheism, as was pretended ; — really I suspect because 
he was a staunch Hanoverian. I expected to find the 
ravings of an enthusiast, or the sullen snarhngs of 
an infidel ; whereas I found the very soul of Swift — 
an intense haK self-deceived humorism. I scarcely 
remember elsewhere such uncommon skill in logic, 
such lawyer-like acuteness, and yet such a grasp of 
common sense. Each of his paragraphs is in itself 
a whole, and yet a link between the preceding and 
following ; so that the entire series forms one argu- 
ment, and yet each is a diamond in itself. 

Was there ever such a miserable scene as that of 
the exhibition of the Austrian standards in the Prench 
house of peers the other day ? * Every other nation 
but the French would see that it was an exhibition of 
their own falsehood and cowardice. A man swears 
that the property intrusted to him is burnt, and then, 
when he is no longer afraid, produces it, and boasts 

ing through death, although the human nature of Christ himself could not he 
thus translated, till he had passed through death." Asgill died in the year 
1738, in the King's Bench prison, where he had heen a prisoner for deht 
thirty years. — Ed. 

* When the allies were in Paris in 1815, all the Austrian standards were 
reclaimed. The answer was that they had been burnt by the soldiers at the 
Hotel des Invalides. This was untrue. The Marquis de Semonville con- 
fessed with pride that he, knowing of the fraud, had concealed these standards, 
taken from Mack at Ulm in 1805, in a vault under the Luxemburg palace. 
*' An inviolable asylum," said the Marquis in his speech to the peers, 
"formed in the vault of this hall has protected this treasure from every 
search. Vainly, during this long space of time, have the most authoritative 
researches endeavoured to penetrate the secret. It would have been culpable 
to reveal it, as long as we were liable to the demands of haughty foreigners. 
No one in this atmosphere of honour is capable of so great a weakness," 
&c.— Ep. 



THE GOOD AND THE TRUE. 



of the atmosphere of ^' honour ^^ through which the 
lie did not transpire. 

Prenchmen are like grains of gunpowder^ — each 
by itself smutty and contemptible^ but mass them 
together and they are terrible indeed. 



August 1, 1831. 

A S there is much beast and some devil in man ; so 
■^ is there some angel and some God in him. The 
beast and the devil may be conquered^ but in this hfe 
never destroyed. 

I will defy any one to answer the arguments of a 
St. Simonist^ except on the ground of Christianity — 
its precepts and its assurances. 



August 6, 1831. 
The Good and the True, — Romish Religion. 
nPHERE is the love of the good for the good^s sake^ 
-*- and the love of the truth for the truth^s sake. I 
have known many^ especially women, love the good 
for the good^s sake ; but very few, indeed, and scarcely 
one woman love the truth for the truth^s sake. Yet 
without the latter, the former may become, as it has 
a thousand times been, the source of persecution of 
the truth, — ^the pretext and motive of inquisitorial 
cruelty and party zealotry. To see clearly that the 
love of the good and the true is ultimately identical 
— ^is given only to those who love both sincerely and 
without any foreign ends. 

Look through the whole history of countries pro- 
fessing the Romish religion, and you will uniformly 



136 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

find the leaven of this besetting and accursed principle 
of action — that the end will sanction any means. 



August 8, 1831. 
England and Holland, 

T^HE conduct of this country to King William of 
-*- Holland has been, in my judgment, base and 
unprincipled beyond anything in our history since 
the times of Charles the Second. Certainly, Holland 
is one of the most important allies that England has ; 
and we are doing our utmost to subject it, and 
Portugal, to Erench influence, or even dominion ! 
Upon my word, the EngKsh people, at this moment, 
are Hke a man palsied in every part of his body but 
one, in which one part he is so morbidly sensitive 
that he cannot bear to have it so much as breathed 
upon, whilst you may pinch him with a hot forceps 
elsewhere without his taking any notice of it. 



August 8, 1831. 
Iron, — Galvanism, — Heat, 

TRON is the most ductile of all hard metals, and 
■^ the hardest of all ductile metals. With the ex- 
ception of nickel, in which it is dimly seen, iron is 
the only metal in which the magnetic power is visible. 
Indeed, it is almost impossible to purify nickel of iron. 

Galvanism is the union of electricity and magnetism, 
and, by being continuous, it exhibits an image of life ; 
— I say, an image only : it is life in death. 

Heat is the mesothesis or indifference of light and 
matter. 



NATIONAL COLONIAL CHARACTER. 137 

August 14, 1831. 
National Colonial Character, and Naval Discipline. 

n^HE cliaracter of most nations in their colonial 
-^ dependencies is in an inverse ratio of excellence 
to their character at home. The best people in the 
mother-country will generally be the worst in the 
colonies ; the worst at home will be the best abroad. 
Or^ perhaps, I may state it less offensively thus : — 
The colonists of a well-governed country will degene- 
rate ; those of an ill-governed country will improve. 
I am now considering the natural tendency of such 
colonists if left to themselves ; of course, a direct act 
of the legislature of the mother-country will break in 
upon this. Where this tendency is exemplified, the 
cause is obvious. In countries well governed and 
happily conditioned, none, or very few, but those who 
are desperate through vice or foUy, or who are mere 
trading adventurers, will be willing to leave their 
homes and settle in another hemisphere ; and of those 
who do go, the best and worthiest are always striving 
to acquire the means of leaving the colony, and of 
retujning to their native land. In ill-govemed and 
ill-conditioned countries, on the contrary, the most 
respectable of the people are willing and anxious to 
emigrate for the chance of greater security and en- 
larged freedom : and if they succeed in obtaining 
these blessings in almost any degree, they have little 
inducement, on the average, to wish to abandon their 
second and better country. Hence, in the former 
case, the colonists consider themselves as mere 
strangers, sojourners, birds of passage, and shift to 
live from hand to mouth, with little regard to lasting 



138 

improvement of the place of their temporary com- 
merce; whilst^ in the latter case^ men feel attached 
to a community to which they are individually in- 
debted for otherwise unattainable benefits, and for 
the most part learn to regard it as their abode, and 
to make themselves as happy and comfortable in it as 
possible. I believe that the internal condition and 
character of the English and Prench "West India 
islands of the last century amply verified this dis- 
tinction ; the Dutch colonists most certainly did, and 
have always done. 

Analogous to this, though not founded on precisely 
the same principle, is the fact that the severest naval 
discipline is always found in the ships of the freest 
nations, and the most lax discipline in the ships of 
the most oppressed. Hence, the naval discipline of 
the Americans is the sharpest; then that of the 
Enghsh;^ then that of the Erench (I speak as it 

* This expression needs explanation. It looTcs as if Mr. Coleridge rated 
the degree of liberty enjoyed by the English, after that of the citizens of the 
United States; but he meant no such thing. His meaning was, that the 
form of government of the latter was more democratic, and formally assigned 
more power to each individual. The Americans, as a nation, had no better 
friend in England than Coleridge; he contemplated their growth with 
interest, and prophesied highly of their destiny, whether under their present 
or other governments. But he well knew their besetting faults and their 
peculiar difficulties, and was most deliberately of opinion that the English 
had, for 130 years last past, possessed a measure of individual freedom and 
social dignity which had never been equalled, much less surpassed, in any 
other country ancient or modern. There is a passage in Mr, Coleridge's 
latest publication {Church and State), which clearly expresses his opinion 
upon this subject: — "It has been frequently and truly observed that in 
England, where the ground-plan, the skeleton, as it were, of the government 
is a monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the aristocracy (the asser- 
tions of its popular character finding a better support in the harangues and 
theories of popular men, than in state documents, and the records of clear 
history), a far greater degree of liberty is, and long has been, enjoyed, than 
ever existed in the ostensibly freest, that is, most democratic, commonwealths 
of ancient or modern times ; greater, indeed, and with a more decisive pre- 
dominance of the spirit of freedom, than the wisest and most philanthropic 
statesmen of antiquity, or than the great commonwealth's-men, — ^the stars of 



ENGLAND. 139 



used to be) ; and on board a Spanish sliip^ there is no 
discijDhne at all. 

At Genoa^ the word ^^ Liberty ^^ is^ or used to be^ 
engraved on the chains of the galley-slaves^ and the 
doors of the dungeons. 



August 15, 1831. 
England. — Holland and Belgium, 

T CANNOT contain my indignation at the conduct 
-^ of our government towards Holland. They have 
undoubtedly forgotten the true and well-recognised 
policy of tliis country in regard to Portugal in per- 
mitting the war faction in France to take possession 
of the Tagus^ and to buUy the Portuguese upon so 
flimsy — indeed^ false^ a pretext ;* yet^ in tliis instance^ 
something may be said for them. ]\Iiguel is such a 
wretch^ that I acknowledge a sort of morahty in 
leaving him to be cuffed and insulted; though^ of 
course^ this is a poor answer to a statesman who 
alleges the interest and policy of the country. But> 

that narrow interspace of blue sky bet^veen the black clouds of the first and 
second Charles's reigns — believed compatible, the one -vrith the safety of the 
state, the other Td.th the interests of morality. Yes ! for little less than a 
century and a-half, Englishmen have, collectively and individually, lived 
and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, than the citizens of any 
known republic, past or present." (p. 120.) Upon which he subjoins the 
following note: — "It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of 
North America should have been excepted. But the identity of stock, lan- 
guage, customs, manners, and laws scarcely allows us to consider this an 
exception, even though it were quite certain both that it is and that it will 
continue such. It was at all events a remark worth remembering, which I 
once heard from a traveller (a prejudiced one, I must admit), that where 
every man may take liberties, there is little liberty for any man; or, that 
where every man takes liberties, no man can enjoy any." (p. 121.) See also a 
passage to the like effect in the Friend, vol. i. p. 129. — Ed. 

* Meaning, principally, the whipping, so richly deserved, inflicted on a 
Frenchman called Bonhomme, for committing a disgusting breach of common 
decency in the cathedral of Coimbra, during divine service in Passion 
Week.— Ed. 



140 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

as to the Dutdi and King William : the firsts as a 
nation, the most ancient ally, the alter idem of Eng- 
land, the best deserving of the cause of freedom and 
religion and morality of any people in Europe ; and 
the second, the very best sovereign now in Christendom, 
with, perhaps, the single exception of the excellent 
King of Sweden ; ^ — -was ever anytliing so mean and 
cowardly as the behaviour of England! The Eive 
Powers have, throughout this conference, been actuated 
exclusively by a selfish desire to preserve peace — I 
should rather say, to smother war — at the expense of 
a most valuable but inferior power. They have over 
and over again acknowledged the justice of the Dutch 
claims, and the absurdity of the Belgian pretences ; 
but as the Belgians were also as impudent as they 
were iniquitous, — as they would not yield their point, 
why then — that peace may be preserved — the Dutch 
must yield theirs ! A foreign prince comes into 
Belgium, pending these negociations, and takes an 
unqualified oath to maintain the Belgian demands : — 
what could King William or the Dutch do, if they 
ever thereafter meant to call themselves independent, 
but resist and resent this outrage to the uttermost ? 
It was a crisis in which every consideration of state 
became inferior to the strong sense and duty of 
national honour. When, indeed, the Erench appear 
in the field. King William retires. ^^ I now see,^^ he 
may say, ^^ that the powers of Europe are determined 
to abet the Belgians. The justice of such a pro- 
ceeding I leave to their conscience and the decision 

* " Everything that I have heard or read of this sovereign has contributed 
to the impression on my mind, that he is a good and a wise man, and worthy 
to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen of the Gothic race." 
—Church and State p. 125. n.— Ed. 



GREATEST HAPPINESS PRINCIPLE. 141 

of history. It is now no longer a question whether 
I am tamely to submit to rebels and an usurper ; it 
is no longer a quarrel between Holland and Belgium: 
it is an alliance of all Europe against Holland^ — 
in which case I yield. I have no desire to sacrifice 
my people.''^ 

Wlien Leopold said that he was called to ^^ reign 
over four miUions of noble Belgians/^ I thought the 
phrase would have been more germane to the matter 
if he had said that he was called to ^^ rein in four 
million restive asses.''^ 



August 20, 1831. 
Greo.test Happiiuss Principle, — Hollism. 

r\ p. Q. in the Morning Chronicle is a clever 
^ • fellow. He is for the greatest possible happi- 
ness for the greatest possible number^ and for the 
longest possible time ! So am I ; so are you^ and 
every one of us^ I will venture to say^ round the tea- 
table. First, however, what does 0. P. Q. mean by 
the word hapjnness ? and, secondly, how does he pro- 
pose to make other persons agree in his definition of 
the term ? Don^t you see the ridiculous absurdity of 
setting up that as a principle or motive of action, 
which is, in fact, a necessary and essential instinct of 
our very nature — an inborn and inextinguishable 
desire ? How can creatures susceptible of pleasure 
and pain do otherwise than desire happiness ? But, 
what happiness ? That is the question. The American 
savage, in scalping his fallen enemy, pursues his hap- 
piness naturally and adequately. A Chickasaw, or 
Pawnee Bentham, or 0. P. Q., would necessarily 



142 Coleridge's table talk. 

hope for the most frequent opportunities possible of 
scalping the greatest possible number of savages^ for 
the longest possible time. There is no escaping tliis 
absurdity^ unless you come back to a standard of 
reason and duty, imperative upon our merely plea- 
surable sensations. Oh ! but, says 0. P. Q._, I am 
for the happiness of others ! Of others ! Are you, 
indeed ? Well, I happen to be one of those others^ 
and, so far as I can judge from what you show me of 
your habits and views, I would rather be excused 
from your banquet of happiness. Your mode of 
happiness would make me miserable. To go about 
doing as much good as possible to as many men as 
possible, is, indeed, an excellent object for a man to 
propose to himself ; but then, in order that you may 
not sacrifice the real good and happiness of others to 
your particular views, which may be quite different 
from your neighbour's, you must do that good to 
others which the reason, common to all, pronounces 
to be good for all. In this sense your fine maxim is 
so very true as to be a mere truism. 



So you object, with old Hobbes, that I do good 
actions for the pleasure of a good conscience ; and 
so, after all, I am only a refined sensualist ! Heaven 
bless you, and mend your logic ! Don't you see that 
if conscience, which is in its nature a consequence, 
were thus anticipated and made an antecedent — a 
party instead of a judge — it would dishonour your 
draft upon it — it would not pay on demand ? Don't 
you see that, in truth, the very fact of acting with 
this motive properly and logically destroys all claim 
upon conscience to give you any pleasure at all ? 



THE TWO MODES OF POLITICAL ACTION". 143 

August 22, 1831. 
The Two Modes of Political Action, 

THERE are many able and patriotic members in 
the House of Commons — Sir Enbert Inglis^ Sir 
Robert Peel^ and some others. But I grieve that they 
never have the coui^age or the Trisdom — I know not 
in which the failure is — to take their stand upon duty, 
and to appeal to all men as men, — to the Good and 
the True, which exist for all^ and of which all have an 
apprehension. They always set to work — especially, 
his great eminence considered, Sir Robert Peel — by 
addressing themselves to individual interests ; the 
measure will be injurious to the linen-drapers, or to 
the bricklayers; or this clause will bear hard on 
bobbin-net or pophns, and so forth. Whereas their 
adversaries — the demagogues — always work on the 
opposite principle : they always appeal to men . as 
men; and, as you know, the most terrible comnil- 
sions in society have been wrought by such phrases 
as Rights of Man, Sovereignty of the People, &c., 
which no one understands, which apply to no one in 
particular, but to aU in general.* The devil works 

* " It is -witli nations as -svith individuals. In tranquil moods and peace- 
able times "we are quite practical; facts only, and cool common sense, are 
tlien in fasMon. But let the -n-inds of passion s^rell, and straiglitTray men 
begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most 
universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy ; in short, 
to feel particular truths and mere facts as poor, cold, narrow, and incom- 
mensurate with their feelings." — Statesman's Manual, p. 18. 

'' It seems a paradox only to the unthinking, and it is a fact that none but 
the unread in history will deny, that, in periods of popular tumult and 
innovation, the more abstract a notion is, the more readily has it been found 
to combine, the closer has appeared its affinity, with the feelings of a people, 
and with all their immediate impulses to action. At the commencement of 
the French Eevolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed 
in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physio- 
cratic politicians and economists. The public roads were crowded with 



144 COLE-RIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

precisely in the same way. He is a very clever 
fellow; I have no acquaintance with him^ but I 
respect his evident talents. Consistent truth and 
goodness will assuredly in the end overcome every- 
thing ; but inconsistent good can never be a match 
for consistent evil. Alas ! I look in vain for some 
wise and vigorous man to sound the word Duty in 
the ears of this generation. 



August 24, 1831. 
Truths and Maxims. 



nnHE English pubUc is not yet ripe to comprehend 
-L the essential difference between the reason and 
the understanding — between a principle and a maxim 
— an eternal truth and a mere conclusion generalized 
from a great number of facts. A man, having seen a 
million moss roses all red, concludes from his own 
experience and that of others that all moss roses are 
red. That is a maxim with liim — the greatest amount 
of his knowledge upon the subject. But it is only 
true until some gardener has produced a white moss 
rose, — after which the maxim is good for nothing. 
Again, suppose Adam watcliing the sun sinking under 
the western horizon for the first time ; he is seized 
with gloom and terror, relieved by scarce a ray of hope 
that he shall ever see the glorious light again. The 
next evening, when it declines, his hopes are stronger, 
but still mixed with fear ; and even at the end of a 
thousand years^ all that a man can feel is a hope and 

armed enthusiasts, disputing on the inalienable sovereignty of the people, 
the imprescriptible laws of the pure reason, and the universal constitution, 
which, as rising out of the nature and rights of man as man, all nations alike 
were under the obligation of adopting.'' — Statesman's Manual. 



DRAYTON. 145 



an expectation so strong as to preclude anxiety. Now 
compare this in its highest degree with the assurance 
wliich you have that the two sides of any triangle are 
together greater than the third. This^ demonstrated 
of one triangle^ is seen to be eternally true of all 
imaginable triangles. This is a truth perceived at 
once by the intuitive reason^ independently of expe- 
rience. It is and must ever be so^ multiply and vary 
the shapes and sizes of triangles as you may. 



It used to be said that four and five make nine. 
Locke says^ that four and five are nine. Now I say, 
that four and five are not nine^ but that they will mahe 
nine. ATlien I see foiu' objects wliich wiU form a 
square, and five which ^vill form a pentagon, I see that 
they are two different things ; when combined, they 
will form a tliird different figure, wliich we call nine. 
When separate they are not it, but will make it. 



September 11, 1881. 
Drayton and Daniel. 

T^EAYTON is a sweet poet, and Selden^s notes to 
-^ the early part of the, Polyolbion are well worth 
your perusal. Daniel is a superior man; his diction 
is pre-eminently pure — of that quality whicli I believe 
has always existed somewhere in society. It is just 
such Enghsh, without any alteration, as Wordsworth 
or Sir George Beaumont might have spoken or written 
in the present day. 

Yet there are instances of sublimity in Drayton, 
When deploring the cutting down of some of our old 
forests, he says, in language which reminds the reader 



146 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of Lear^ written subsequently^ and also of several 
passages in Mr. Wordsworth^s poems : — 

■ " our trees so hack'd above the ground, 



That where their lofty tops the neighbouring countries crown'd. 
Their trunks (like aged folks) now bare and naked stand, 
Asfoi' revenge to Heaven each held a withered handJ" * 

That is very fine. 



September 12, 1831. 
Mr. Coleridge's System of Philosophy, 
""Y system^ if I may venture to give it so fine a 
name^ is the only attempt I know^ ever made 
to reduce all knowledges finto harmony. It opposes 
no other system^ but shows what was true in each ; 
and how that which was true in the particular^ in each 
of them became error^ lecause it was only haK the 
truth. I have endeavoured to unite the insulated 
fragments of truths and therewith to frame a perfect 

* Polyol. VII. 

" He (Drayton) iras a poet by nature, and carefully improved his talent ; 
one Tybo sedulously laboured to deserve the approbation of such as were 
capable of appreciating and cared nothing for the censures which others 
might pass upon him. ' Like me that list,' he says, 

' my honest rhymes 

Nor care for critics, nor regard the times,' 

And though he is not a poet virum volitare per ora, nor one of those whose 
better fortune it is to live in the hearts of their devoted admirers, — yet what 
he deemed his gTeatest work will be preserved by its subject ; some of his 
minor poems have merit enough in their execution to ensure their preserva- 
tion; and no one who smdies poetry as an art will think his time misspent 
in perusing the whole, if he have any real love for the art he is pursuing. 
The youth who enters upon that pursuit without a feeling of respect and 
gratitude for those elder poets, who by their labours have prepared the way 
for him, is not likely to produce any thing himself that will be held in 
remembrance by posterity."' — The Doctor, &c. c. 36, P. I. 

I heartily trust that the author or auth-rs, as the case may be, of this 
singularly thoughtful and diverting book will in due time continue it. Let 
some people say what they please, there has not been the fellow of it pub- 
lished for many a long day. — Ed. 



COLEUIDGE^S SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY. 147 

mirror. I show to each system that I Mly understand 
and rightfully appreciate what that system means ; 
but then I lift up that system to a higher point of 
view^ from which I enable it to see its former position, 
where it was, indeed, but under another light and 
with different relations ; — so that the fragment of 
truth is not only acknowledged, but explained. Thus 
the old astronomers discovered and maintained much 
that was true ; but, because they were placed on a 
false ground, and looked from a wrong point of view, 
they never did, they never could, discover the truth 
— that is, the whole truth. As soon as they left the 
earth, their false centre, and took their stand in the 
sun, immediately they saw the whole system in its 
true light, and their former station remaining, but 
remaining as a part of the prospect. I wish, in short, 
to connect by a moral copula natural history with 
pohtical history ; or, in other words, to make history 
scientific, and science historical — to take from liistory 
its accidentality, and from science its fatalism. 



I never from a boy could, under any circumstances, 
feel the slightest dread of death as such. In all my 
illnesses I have ever had the most intense desire to be 
released from this life, unchecked by any but one wish, 
namely, to be able to finish my work on Philosophy. 
Not that I have any author's vanity on the subject : 
God knows that I should be absolutely glad, if I could 
hear that the thing had already been done before me. 



Illness never in the smallest degree affects my in- 
tellectual powers. I can tUnh with aU my ordinary 
vigour in the midst of pain : but I am beset with the 



148 Coleridge's table talk. 

most wretched and unmanning reluctance and shrink- 
ing from action. I could not upon such occasions 
take the pen in hand to write down my thoughts for 
all the wide world. 



October 26, 1831. 
Keenness and Subtlety. 

T7EW men of genius are keen; but almost every 
-*- man of genius is subtle. If you ask me the 

difference between keenness and subtlety^ I answer 
that it is the difference between a point and an edge. 
To split a hair is no proof of subtlety ; for subtlety 
acts in distinguishing differences — in showing that two 
things apparently one are in fact two ; wiiereas^ to 
split a hair is to cause division^ and not to ascertain 
difierence. 



October 27, 1831. 
Duties and Needs of an A dvocate, 

nnHERE is undoubtedly a limit to the exertions of 
-*- an advocate for his client. He has a rights it is 
his bounden duty^ to do everything which his client 
might honestly do^ and to do it with all the effect 
which any exercise of skilly talent^ or knowledge of 
his ow^n may be able to produce. But the advocate 
has no rights nor is it his duty^ to do that for his 
client which his client inforo conscientia has no right 
to do for himseKj as^ for a gross example^ to put in 
evidence a forged deed or will^ knowing it to be so 
forged. As to mere confounding of witnesses by 
skiKul cross-examination^ I own I am not disposed to 
be very strict. The whole thing is perfectly well 



DUTIES AND NEEDS OF AN ADVOCATE. 149 

understood on all liands^ and it is little more in general 
than a sort of cudgel-playing between tlie counsel and 
the witness, in which, I speak with submission to you, 
I think I have seen the witness have the best of it as 
often as his assailant. It is of the utmost importance 
in the administration of justice that knowledge and 
intellectual power should be as far as possible equalised 
between the Crown and the prisoner, or plaintiff and 
defendant. Hence especially arises the necessity for 
an order of advocates, — men whose duty it ought to 
be to know what the law allows and disallows ; but 
whose interests should be wholly indifferent as to the 
persons or characters of their clients. If a certain 
latitude in examining witnesses is, as experience seems 
to have shown, a necessary mean towards the evisce- 
ration of the truth of matters of fact, I have no doubt, 
as a moralist, in saying, that such latitude within the 
bounds now existing is justifiable. We must be con- 
tent with a certain quantum in this life, especially in 
matters of pubKc cognisance ; the necessities of society 
demand it ; we must not be righteous overmuch, or 
wise overmuch ; and, as an old father says, in what 
vein may there not be a plethora, w^hen the Scripture 
tells us that there may under circumstances be too 
much of virtue and of wisdom ? 

Still I think that, upon the whole, the advocate is 
placed in a position unfavourable to his moral being, 
and, indeed, to his intellect also, in its higher powers. 
Therefore I would recommend an advocate to devote 
a part of his leisure time to some study of the meta- 
physics of the mind, or metaphysics of theology; 
something, I mean, which shall caU forth aU his 
powers, and centre his wishes in the investigation of 



150 coleeidge's table talk. 

truth alone^ without reference to a side to be sup- 
ported. No studies give such a power of distinguishing 
as metaphysical^ and in their natural and unperverted 
tendency they are ennobhng and exalting. Some such 
studies are wanted to counteract the operation of 
legal studies and practice^ which sharpen^ indeed_, but_, 
like a grinding- stone^ narrow Avliilst they sharpen. 



NOVEJIBER 19, 1831. 

Abolition of the French Hereditainj Peerage. 

T CANNOT say what the Erench peers will do ; but 
-■- I can tell you what they ought to do. ^^ So far/^ 
they might say^ ^^ as our feelings and interests^ as in- 
dividuals^ are concerned in this matter — if it really be 
the prevailing wish of our fellow-countrymen to destroy 
the hereditary peerage — we shall^ without regret^ retire 
into the ranks of private citizens : but we are bound 
by the provisions of the existing constitution to con- 
sider ourselves collectively as essential to the well-being 
of Prance : we have been placed here to defend what 
Prance^ a short time ago at least, thought a vital part 
of its government ; and^ if we did not defend it, what 
answer could we make hereafter to Prance itself, if she 
should come to see, what we think to be an error, in 
the light in wliich we view it ? We should be justly 
branded as traitors and cowards, who had deserted 
the post which we were specially appointed to main- 
tain. As a House of Peers, therefore, — as one sub- 
stantive branch of the legislature, we can never, in 
honour or in conscience, consent to a measure of the 
impolicy and dangerous consequences of which we are 
convinced. 



CONDUCT OF ^^IINISTERS ON REFOU^M! BILL. 151 

^'It, therefore, this measure is demanded by the 
country, let the king and the deputies form them- 
selves into a constituent assembly; and then, assuming 
to act in the name of the total nation, let them 
decree the abolition. In that case we jield to a just, 
perhaps, but revolutionary, act, in Avhich we do not 
participate, and against wiiich we are, upon the sup- 
position, quite powerless. If the deputies, however, 
consider themselves so completely in the character of 
delegates as to be at present absolutely pledged to 
vote without fr-eedom of dehberation, let a concise, 
bat perspicuous, summary of the ablest arguments 
that can be adduced on either side be drawn up, and 
printed, and circulated throughout the country ; and 
then, after two months, let the deputies demand fresh 
instructions upon this point. One thing, as men of 
honour, we declare beforehand — that, come what will, 
none of us who are now peers will ever accept a peerage 
created de novo for life.''^ 



November 20, 1831. 
Conduct of Ministers on the Reform Bill. — The Multitude. 

npHE present ministers have, in my judgment, been 
-*- guilty of two things pre-eminently wicked, sensv 
politico^ in their conduct upon this Reform BiU. 
Pirst, they have endeavoured to carry a fundamental 
change in the material and mode of action of the 
government of the country by so exciting the passions, 
and playing upon the necessary ignorance of the 
numerical majority of the nation, that aU freedom and 
utility of discussion, by competent heads, in the proper 
place, should be precluded. In doing this they have 



152 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

used^ or sanctioned the use of, arguments which may 
be applied with equal or even greater force to the car- 
rying of any measure whatever^ no matter how atrocious 
in its character or destructive in its consequences. 
They have appealed directly to the argument of the 
greater number of voices^ no matter whether the 
utter ers were drunk or sober^ competent or not com- 
petent ; and they have done the utmost in their power 
to rase out the sacred principle in politics of a repre- 
sentation of interests^ and to introduce the mad and 
barbarising scheme of a delegation of individuals. 
And they have done all this without one woid of 
thankfulness to God for the manifold blessings of 
which the constitution^ as settled at the Revolution, 
imperfect as it may be, has been the source or vehicle 
or condition to this great nation, — without one honest 
statement of the manner in which the anomalies in 
the practice grew up, or any manly declaration of the 
inevitable necessities of government which those ano- 
malies have met. With no humility, nor fear, nor 
reverence, like Ham the accursed, they have beckoned, 
with grinning faces, to a vulgar mob, to come and 
insult over the nakedness of a parent; when it had 
become them, if one spark of filial patriotism had 
burnt within their breasts, to have marched with 
silent steps and averted faces to lay their robes upon 
liis destitution ! 

Secondly, they have made the Mn^ the prime mover 
in all this political wickedness : they have made the 
kin^ tell his people that they were deprived of their 
rights, and, by direct and necessary implication, that 
they and their ancestors for a century past had been 
slaves ; they have made the king vilify the memory of 



RELTGION. 158 



his own brother and father. Rights ! There are no 
rights whatever without corresponding duties. Look 
at the history of the growth of our constitution, and 
you will see that our ancestors never upon any occa- 
sion stated, as a ground for claiming any of their 
privileges, an abstract right inherent in themselves ; 
you will nowhere in our parliamentary records find 
the miserable sophism of the Rights of Man. No ! 
they were too wise for that. They took good care to 
refer their claims to custom and prescription, and 
boldly — sometimes very impudently — asserted them 
upon traditionary and constitutional grounds. The 
Bill is bad enough, God knows; but the arguments 
of its advocates, and the manner of their advocacy, are 
a thousand times worse than the Bill itself; and you 
will live to think so. 

I am far, very far, from wishing to indulge in any 
Aiilgar abuse of the vulgar. I beheve that the feeling 
of the multitude will, in most cases, be in favour of 
something good ; but this it is wliich I perceive, that 
they are always under the domination of some one 
feehng or view ; — whereas truth, and above all, prac- 
tical wisdom, must be the result of a wide compre- 
hension of the more and the less, the balance and 
the counterbalance. 



December 3, 1831. 
Religion* 

A RELTGIO^N", that is, a true religion, must consist 
-^ of ideas and facts both ; not of ideas alone witJi- 
out facts, for then it would be mere Philosophy ; — nor 
of facts alone Vvdthout ideas, of wliich those facts are 



154 coleeidge's table talk. 

the symbols^ or out of which they arise^ or upon which 
they are grounded : for then it would be mere History. 



December 17, 1831. 
Union with Ireland. — Irish Church. 

T AM quite sure that no dangers are to be feared by 
-^ England from the disannexing and independence 
of Ireland at all comparable with the evils wliich 
have been^ and will yet be_, caused to England by the 
Union. We have never received one particle of ad- 
vantage from our association with Ireland^ whilst we 
have in many most vital particulars violated the prin- 
ciples of the British constitution solely for the purpose 
of conciliating the Irish agitators^ and of endeavouring 
— a vain endeavour — to find room for them under the 
same government. Mr. Pitt has received great credit 
for effecting the Union; bat I believe it will sooner 
or later be discovered that the manner in which^ and 
the terms upon which^ he effected it^ made it the most 
fatal blow that ever was levelled against the peace and 
prosperity of England. Erom it came the Catholic 
BiU. Erom the Cathohc Bill has come this Reform 
Bill ! And what next ? 



The case of the Irish Church is certainly anomalous^ 
and full of practical difficulties. On the one hand^ it 
is the only church wliich the constitution can admit ; 
on the other^ such are the circumstances^ it is a church 
that cannot act as a church towards five-sixths of the 
persons nominally and legally within its care. 



A STATE. PERSOXS AND THIN'GS. HISTORY. 155 



December 18, 1831. 
A State. — Persons and Things. — History. 

THE difference between an inorganic and an organic 
body lies in this : — In the first — a sheaf of corn 
— the whole is nothing more than a collection of the 
individual parts or phenomena. In the second — a 
man — the whole is the efiect of^ or results from^ the 
parts; it — the whole — is everj^liing^ and the parts 
are notliing. 

A State is an idea intermediate between the two — 
the whole being a result from^ and not a mere total 
of, the parts^ and yet not so merging the constituent 
parts in the result^ but that the individual exists 
integrally wdtliin it. Extremes^ especially in poKtics, 
meet. In Athens each individual Athenian was of 
no value ; but taken altogether^ as Demus^ they were 
everything in such a sense that no indi\ddual citizen 
was an}i:hing. In Turkey there is the sigTi of unity 
put for unity. The Sultan seems himseK the State ; 
but it is an illusion : there is in fact in Turkey no 
State at all : the whole consists of nothing but a vast 
collection of neighbourhoods. 

When the government and the aristocracy of this 
country had subordinatedj^;^/'^c;z,S' to things, and treated 
the one like the other — the poor,, with some reason^ 
and almost m self-defence, learned to set up rights 
above duties. The code of a Clnistian society is, 
Debeo, et tu debes — of Heathens or Barbarians, Teneo, 
teneto et tu, si ];jotes.^ 

* "And this, again, is evolved out of the yet higher idea of 'person In 
contradistinction from tMng^ all social law and justice being grounded on 
the principle that a person can never, hut by his ottu fault, become a thing, 



156 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

If men could learn from history^ what lessons it 
miglit teach us ! But passion and party bHnd our 
eyes^ and the light wliich experience gives is a lantern 
on the stern^ which sliines only on the waves beliind us! 



December 27, 1831. 

Beauty, — Genius. 

n^HE old definition of beauty in the Eoman school 
-^ of painting was^ il joiu nelV imo — ^multitude in 
unity ; and there is no doubt that such is the principle 
of beauty. And as one of the most characteristic and 
infallible criteria of the different ranks of men^s intel- 
lects, observe the instinctive habit which aU superior 
minds have of endeavouring to bring, and of never 
resting tiU they have brought, into unity the scattered 
facts which occur in conversation, or in the statements 
of men of business. To attempt to argue any great 
question upon facts only, is absurd; you cannot state 
any fact before a mixed audience, wliich an opponent 
as clever as yourseK cannot with ease twist towards 
another bearing, or at least meet by a contrary fact, 
as it is called. I wonder why facts were ever called 
stubborn things : I am sure they have been found 

or, ^thout grievous -wrong, be treated as such; and the distinction consist- 
ing in tliis, that a thing may he used altogether, and merely as the means to 
an end ; but the person miist always be included in the end ; his interest 
must always form a part of the object, — a mean to -which he, by consent, 
that is, by his own act, makes himself. We plant a tree, and we fell it ; we 
breed the sheep, and we shear, or we kill it, — in both cases wholly as means 
to our ends : for trees and animals are things. The woodcutter and the hind 
are likewise employed as means ; but on agreement, and that too an agree- 
ment of reciprocal advantage, which includes them as well as their employer 
in the end; for they are persons. And the government under which the 
contrary takes place is not worthy to be called a state, if, as in the kingdom 
o^Dahomey, it be unprogressive ; or only by anticipation, where, as in 
Russia, it is in advance to a better and more man-worthy order of things." — 
Church and State, p. 10. 



CHCRCH. STATE. DISSENTERS. 157 

pliable enough lately in the House of Commons and 
elsewhere. Facts^ you know_, are not truths; they 
are not conclusions ; they are not even premisses^ but 
in the natui-e and parts of premisses. The truth 
depends on^ and is only arrived at, by a legitimate 
deduction from all the facts wliich are trulv material. 



December 28, 1831. 
Church. — State. — Dissenters, 

EYEN to a chuix-h^ — the only piu'e democracy, 
because in it persons are alone considered, and 
one person a pnori is equal to another person, — even 
to a church, discipline is an essential condition. But 
a state regards classes, and classes as they represent 
classified property; and to introduce a system of 
representation which must inevitably render all dis- 
cipline impossible, what is it but madness — the mad- 
ness of icfnorant vanity, and reckless obstinacy ? 



I have known, and still know, many Dissenters, who 
profess to have a zeal for Clii'istianity ; and I dare sav 
they have. But I have known very few Dissenters 
indeed, whose hatred to the Chui'ch of England was 
not a much more active principle of action with them 
than their love for Cliristianity. The TTesleyans, in 
nncorrupted parts of the country, are nearly the only 
exceptions. There never was an age since the days of 
the apostles, in wliich the cathoHc spirit of rehgion 
was so dead, and put aside for love of sects and parties, 
as at present. 



158 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



H 



January I, 1832. 
Gracefulness of Children, — Dogs, 
OW inimitably graceful children are in general 
before they learn to dance ! 



There seems a sort of sympathy between the more 
generous dogs and little children. I believe an in- 
stance of a little child being attacked by a large dog is 
very rare indeed. 



January 28, 1832. 
Ideal Tory and Whig, 

^PHE ideal Tory and the ideal Whig (and some such 
-^ there have really been) agreed in the necessity 
and benefit of an exact balance of the three estates : 
but the Tory was more jealous of the balance being 
deranged by the people; the Whig^ of its being 
deranged by the Crown. But this was a habit, a 
jealousy only ; they both agreed in the ultimate pre- 
servation of the balance ; and accordingly they might 
each, under certain circumstances, without the slight- 
est inconsistency, pass from one side to the other, as 
the ultimate object required it. This the Tories did 
at the Eevolution, but remained Tories as before. 

I have haK a mind to write a critical and philoso- 
phical essay on Whiggism, from Dryden^s Achitophel 
(Shaftesbury), the first AVliig (for, with Dr. Johnson^s 

leave, the devil is no such cattle), down to , who 

I trust, in God^s mercy to the interests of peace, 
union, and liberty in this nation, will be the last. In 
it I would take the last years of Queen Anne^s reign 
as the zenith, or palmy state, of "Whiggism in its 



MINISTERS AND THE REFORM BILL. 159 

divinest avatar of common sense^ or of the under- 
standing, vigorously exerted in the right direction on 
the right and proper objects of the understanding; 
and would then trace the rise, the occasion, the 
progress, and the necessary degeneration of the Whig 
spirit of compromise, even down to the profound 
ineptitudes of their party in these days. A clever 
fellow might make something of tliis hint. How 
Asgill would have done it ! 



February 22, 1832. 

The Church. 

npHE church is the last relic of our nationality. 
^ Would to God that the bishops and the clergy in 
general could once folly understand that the Christian 
church and the national church are as httle to be con- 
founded as divided ! I think the fate of the Eeform 
Eill, in itself, of comparatively minor importance; 
the fate of the national church occupies my mind 
with greater intensity. 



February 24, 1832. 
Ministers and the Reform Bill. 

T COULD not help smiling, in reading the report 
■^ of Lord Gre/s speech in the House of Lords, the 
other night, when he asked Lord Wicklow whether 
he seriously behoved that he. Lord Grey, or any of 
the ministers, intended to subvert the institutions of 
the country. Had I been in Lord Wicklow^s place, 
I should have been tempted to answer this question 
sometliing in the following way : — '' Waiving the 
charge in an offensive sense of personal consciousness 



160 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

against the noble earl^ and all but one or two of his 
colleagues, upon my honour, and in the presence of 
Almighty God, I answer. Yes ! You have destroyed 
the freedom of Parliament ; you have done your best 
to shut the door of the House of Commons to the 
property, the birth, the rank, the wisdom of the 
people, and have flung it open to their passions and 
their follies. You have disfrancliised the gentry, and 
the real patriotism of the nation : you have agitated 
and exasperated the mob, and tlirown the balance of 
political power into the hands of that class (the shop- 
keepers) which, in all countries and in all ages, has 
been, is now, and ever will be, the least patriotic and 
the least conservative of any. You are now preparing 
to destroy for ever the constitutional independence of 
the House of Lords ; you are for ever displacing it 
from its supremacy as a co-ordinate estate of the 
realm ; and whether you succeed in passing your bill 
by actually swamping our votes by a batch of new 
peers, or by frightening a sufficient number of us out 
of our opinions by the threat of one — equally you 
will have superseded the triple assent which the con- 
stitution requires to the enactment of a valid law, and 
have left the king alone with the delegates of the 
populace ! ^^ 

March 3, 1832. 
Disfranchisement » 

I AM afraid the Conservative party see but one-half 
of the truth. The mere extension of the franchise 
is not the evil; I should be glad to see it greatly 
extended ; — there is no harm in that per se ; the mis- 
chief is that the francliise is nominally extended. 



ASTROLOGY. — ALCHEMY. 161 

but to such classes, and in such a manner, that a 
practical disfranchisement of all above, and a discon- 
tenting of all below, a favoured class are the unavoid- 
able results. 



March 17, 1832. 
Geniics Feminine. — Pirates, 

■'S face is almost the only exception I know to 

the observation, that sometliing feminine — not effenii- 
nate, mind — is discoverable in the countenances of all 
men of genius. Look at that face of old Dampier, a 
rough sailor, but a man of exquisite mind. How soft 
is the air of his countenance, how delicate the shape 
of liis temples ! 

I think it very absurd and misplaced to call Ealeigh 
and Drake, and others of our naval heroes of Eliza- • 
betli^s age, pirates. No man is a j^irate, unless his 
contemporaries agree to call him so. Drake said, — 
^' The subjects of the king of Spain have done their 
best to ruin my country : ergo, I will try to ruin the 
king of Spain^s country."''' Would it not be siUy to 
call the Argonauts pirates in our sense of the word ? 



March 18, 1832. 

A strology. — A Icliemy, 

TT is curious to mark how instinctively the reason 
J- has always pointed out to men the ultimate end of 
the various sciences, and how immediately afterwards 
they have set to work, like children, to realise that 
end by inadequate means. Now they applied to their 
appetites, now to their passions, now to their fancy. 



162 COLEHIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

now to the understanding, and lastly^, to the intuitive 
reason again. There is no doubt but that astrology 
of some sort or other would be the last achievement 
of astronomy : there must be chemical relations be- 
tween the planets ; the difference of their magnitudes 
compared with that of their distances is not ex- 
plicable otherwise; but this, though, as it were, 
blindly and unconsciously seen, led immediately to 
fortune-telling and other nonsense. So alchemy is 
the theoretic end of chemistry: there must be a 
common law, upon which all can become each, and 
each all ; but then the idea was turned to the coining 
of gold and silver. 



March 20, 1832. 
Reform Bill. — Crisis, 

T HAYE heard but two arguments of any weight 
-*- adduced in favour of passing this Reform Bill, and 
they are in substance these : — 1. We will blow your 
brains out if you don^t pass it. 3. We will drag you 
through a horsepond if you don^t pass it ; and there 
is a good deal of force in both. 



Talk to me of your pretended crisis ! Stuff ! A 
vigorous government would in one month change all 
the data for your reasoning. Would you have me 
believe that the events of this world are fastened to 
a revolving cycle with God at one end and the Devil 
at the other, and that the Devil is now uppermost ! 
Are you a Christian, and talk about a crisis in that 
fatalistic sense ! 



DICTATION AND INSPIRATION. 163 

March 31, 1832. 

/o/m, chap. iii. ver. 4. — Dictation and Inspiration. — Gnosis. — 

New Testament Canon. 

ICEETAESTLY understand the ri iy.ol koI aol yvvai] 
in the second chapter* of St. John^s Gospel^ as 
having aliqidcl increjoationis in it — a mild reproof from 
Jesus to Mary for interfering in his ministerial acts 
by requests on her own account. I do not think that 
yvvai was ever used by cliild to parent as a common 
mode of addi*ess : between husband and wife it was ; 
but I cannot think that ixrjTep and yvvat were equiva- 
lent terms in the mouth of a son speaking to liis 
mother. No part of the Clnistopaedia is found in 
John or Paul ; and after the baptism there is no recog- 
nition of any maternal authority in ^lary. See the 
two passages where she endeavours to get access to 
him when he is preaching : — ^^ T^Tiosoever shall do 
the will of God^ the same is my brother^ and my 
sister^ and my mother :^^t and also the recommenda- 
tion of her to the care of Jolm at the crucifixion. 



There may be dictation without inspiration^ and 
inspiration without dictation; they have been and 
continue to be oiievouslv confounded. Balaam and his 
ass were the passive organs of dictation ; but no one, 
I suppose, will venture to call either of those worthies 
inspired. It is my profound conviction that St. John 
and St. Paul were di\-inely inspired; but I totally 
disbeheve the dictation of any one word, sentence, or 
argument throughout theii' ^vritings. Observe, there 
was revelation. AH rehgion is revealed; — revealed 
rehgion is, in my judgment, a mere pleonasm. Eeve- 

* Verse 4. | Mark, ch. iii. ver, 35, 

M 2 



164 coleeidge's table talk. 

lations of facts were undoubtedly made to the pro- 
phets ; revelations of doctrines were as undoubtedly 
made to John and Paul ; — but is it not a mere matter 
of our very senses that John and Paul each dealt with 
those revelations^ expounded them^ insisted on them, 
just exactly according to his own natural strength of 
intellect, habit of reasoning, moral, and even physical 
temperament ? We receive the books ascribed to John 
and Paul as their books on the judgment of men, for 
whom no miraculous discernment is pretended ; nay, 
whom, in their admission and rejection of other books, 
we beheve to have erred. Shall we give less credence 
to John and Paul themselves ? Surely the heart and 
soul of every Christian give him sufficient assurance 
that, in all things that concern him as a ^nan, the 
words that he reads are spirit and truth, and could 
only proceed from Him who made both heart and 
soul. — Understand the matter so, and all difficulty 
vanishes : you read without fear, lest your faith meet 
with some shock from a passage here and there 
which you cannot reconcile with immediate dictation, 
by the Holy Spirit of God, without an absurd violence 
offered to the text. You read the Bible as the best 
of all books, but stiU as a book ; and make use of 
all the means and appliances which learning and 
skill, under the blessing of God, can afford towards 
rightly apprehending the general sense of it — not 
solicitous to find out doctrine in mere epistolary 
familiarity, or facts in clear ad homirtem etjpro tempore 
allusions to national traditions. 



Tertullian, I think, says he had seen the autograph 
copies of some of the apostles^ writings. The truth 



UNITARIANISM. 165 



is, the ancient Church was not guided by the mere 
fact of the genuineness of a writing in pronouncing it 
canonical; — its catholicity was the test applied to it. 
I have not the smallest doubt that the Epistle of 
Barnabas is genuine ; but it is not catholic ; it is full 
of the yvocKTis, though of the most simple and pleasing 
sort. I tliink the same of Hermas. The Church 
would never admit either into the canon^ although 
the Alexandrians always read the Epistle of Barnabas 
in their churches for three hundred years together. 
It was upwards of three centuries before the Epistle 
to the Hebrews was admitted, and this on account of 
its yv^a-Ls : at length, by help of the venerable prefix 
of St. Paulas name, its admirers, happily for us^ 
succeeded. 

So little did the early bishops and preachers think 
their Christian faith wrapped up in, and solely to be 
learned from, the New Testament, — indeed, can it be 
said that there was any such collection for three hun- 
dred years ? — that I remember a letter from * 

to a friend of his, a bishop in the East, in which he 
most evidently speaks of the Christian Scriptures as 
of works of which the bishop knew little or nothing. 



April 4, 1832, 
Unitarianism, — Moral Philosophy, 

I MAKE the greatest difference between ans and 
isms, I should deal insincerely with you, if I said 
that I thought Unitarianism was Christianity. No ; 
as I believe and have faith in the doctrine, it is not 
the truth in Jesus Christ; but God forbid that I 

* I have lost the name which Mr. Coleridge mentioned.— Ed. 



166 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

should doubt that you^ and many other Unitarians, as 
you call yourselves, are, in a practical sense, very good 
Christians. We do not win heaven by logic. 

By the by, what do you mean by exclusively assum- 
ing the title of Unitarians ? As if Tri-Unitarians were 
not necessarily Unitarians, as much (pardon the illus- 
tration) as an apple-pie must of course be a pie ! The 
schoolmen would, perhaps, have called you Unicists ; 
but your proper name is Psilanthropists — ^believers in 
the mere human nature of Christ. 

Upon my word, if I may say so without offence, I 
really think many forms of Pantheistic Atheism more 
agreeable to an imLaginative mind than Unitarianism 
as it is professed in terms : in particular, I prefer the 
Spinosistic scheme infinitely. The early Socinians 
were, to be sure, most unaccountable logicians ; but, 
when you had swallowed their bad reasoning, you 
came to a doctrine on which the hearty at least, might 
rest for some support. They adored Jesus Christ. 
Both Lsehus and Faustus Socinus laid down the 
adorabiHty of Jesus in strong terms. I have nothing, 
you know, to do with their logic. But Unitarianism 
is, in effect, the worst of one kind of Atheism, joined 
to the worst of one kind of Calvinism, like two asses 
tied tail to tail. It has no covenant with God ; and 
looks upon prayer as a sort of seK-magnetizing — a 
getting of the body and temper into a certain status^ 
desirable per se, but having no covenanted reference 
to the Being to whom the prayer is addressed. 



The sum total of moral philosophy is found in this 
one question. Is Good a superfluous word, — or mere 
lazy synonyme for the pleasurable, and its causes ; — 



MOllAL LAW OF POLARITY. 167 

at most^ a mere modification to express degree^ and 
comparative duration of pleasure? — Or the question 
may be more unanswerably stated tlius^ Is good super- 
fluous as a word exponent of a hind ? — If it be, then 
moral philosophy is but a subdivision of physics. If 
not, then the writings of Paley and all his predeces- 
sors and disciples are false and mmt pernicious ; and 
there is an emphatic propriety in the superlative, and 
in a sense which of itself would supply and exemplify 
the difference between most and very. 



April 5, 1832. 
Moral Law of Polarity. 
TT is curious to trace the operation of the moral law^ 
-^ of polarity in the history of politics, religion, &c. 
When the maximum of one tendency has been attained, 
there is no gradual decrease, but a direct transition to 
its minimum, till the opposite tendency has attained 
its maximum ; and then you see another corresponding 
revulsion. With the Eestoration came in all at once 
the mechanico-corpuscular philosophy, which, with the 
increase of manufactures, trade, and arts, made every- 
thing in philosophy, religion, and poetry objective; 
till, at length, attachment to mere external worldKness 
and forms got to its maximum, — ^when out burst the 
French revolution: and with it everjrthing became 
immediately subjective, mthout any object at all. 
The Rights of Man, the Sovereignty of the People, 
were subject and object both. We are now, I think, 
on the turning point again. Tliis Reform seems the 
ne plus ultra of that tendency of the public mind, 
which substitutes its own undefined notions or passions 



168 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

for real objects and historical actualities. There is 
not one of the ministers — except the one or two 
revolutionists among them — who has ever given us 
a hint, throughout this long struggle, as to icliat he 
really does beHeve will be the product of the bill; 
what sort of House of Commons it will make for the 
purpose of governing this empire soberly and safely. 
No ; they have actualised for a moment a wish, a fear, 
a passion, but not an idea. 



April 7, 1832. 
Endemic Disease. — Quarantine. 

nPHERE are two grand divisions under which all 
-*- contagious diseases may be classed: — 1. Those 
which spring from organized living beings, and from 
the life in them, and which enter, as it were, into the 
life of those in whom they reproduce themselves — 
such as small-pox and measles. These become so 
domesticated with the habit and system, that they 
are rarely received twice. 3. Those which spring 
from dead organized, or unorganized matter, and 
which may be comprehended under the wide term 
malaria. 

You may have passed a stagnant pond a hundred 
times without injury : you happen to pass it again, in 
low spirits and chilled, precisely at the moment of the 
explosion of the gas : the malaria strikes on the 
cutaneous or veno-glandular system, and drives the 
blood from the surface ; the sliivering fit comes on, 
till the musculo-arterial irritability re-acts^ and then 
the hot fit succeeds : and, unless bark or arsenic — 
particularly bark, because it is a bitter as well as a 



EPIDEMIC. QUARANTINE. 169 

tonic — be applied to strengthen the veno-glandular, 
and to moderate the musculo-arterial, system, a man 
may have the ague for thirty years together. 

But if, instead of being exposed to the solitary 
malaria of a pond, a man, travelling tlirough the 
Pontine Marshes, permits his animal energies to flag, 
and surrenders himself to the drowsiness which gene- 
rally attacks him, then blast upon blast strikes upon 
the cutaneous system, and passes through it to the 
musculo-arterial, and so completely overpowers the 
latter that it cannot re-act, and the man dies at once, 
instead of only catcliing an ague. 

There are three factors of the operation of an epi- 
demic or atmospheric disease. The first and principal 
one is the predisposed state of the body; secondly, 
the specific virus in the atmosphere; and, thirdly, 
the accidental circumstances of weather, locality, food, 
occupation, &c. Against the second of these we are 
powerless : its nature, causes, and sympathies are too 
subtle for our senses to find data to go upon. Against 
the first, medicine may act profitably. Against the 
third, a wise and sagacious medical poKce ought to be 
adopted; but, above aU, let every man act like a 
Christian, in aU charity, and love, and brotherly 
kindness, and sincere rehance on God^s merciful 
providence. 

Quarantine cannot keep out an atmospheric disease; 
but it can, and does always, increase the predisposing 
causes of its reception. 



170 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

April 10, 1832. 
Harmony, 

ALL harmony is founded on a relation to rest — on 
relative rest. Take a metallic plate^ and strew 
sand on it ; sound an harmonic chord over the sand^ 
and the grains will whirl about in circles and other 
geometrical figures, all, as it were^ depending on some 
point of sand relatively at rest. Sound a discord, and 
every grain will whisk about without any order at all, 
in no figures, and with no points of rest. 

The clerisy of a nation^ that is, its learned men, 
whether poets, or philosophers, or scholars, are these 
points of relative rest. There could be no order, no 
harmony of the whole, without them. 



April 21, 1832. 
Intellectual Revolutions. — Modern Style. 

THEEE have been three silent revolutions in Eng- 
land : — first, when the professions fell off from 
the church; secondly, when literature fell off from 
the professions ; and^ thirdly, when the press fell off 
from literature. 

Common phrases are^ as it were^ so stereotyped now 
by conventional use^ that it is really much easier to 
write on the ordinary poUtics of the day in the common 
newspaper style, than it is to make a good pair of shoes. 
An apprentice has as much to learn now to be a shoe- 
maker as ever he had ; but an ignorant coxcomb^ with 
a competent want of honesty, may very effectively 
wield a pen in a newspaper office, with infinitely less 
pains and preparation than were necessary formerly. 



COLOURS. 171 



April 23, 1832. 
Crcnius of the Spanish and Italians. — Vico. — Spinosa. 

THE genius of the Spanish people is exquisitely 
subtle^ without being at aU acute ; hence there is 
so much humour and so Httle wit in their Hterature. 
The genius of the Itahans^ on the contrary^ is acute^ 
profound^ and sensual^ but not subtle ; hence what 
they think to be humourous, is merely "^dtty. 

To estimate a man like Vico, or any great man who 
has made discoveries and committed errors, you ought 
to say to yourself — ^^ He did so and so in the year 
1720, a Papist, at Naples. Now, what would he not 
have done if he had lived now, and could have availed 
himself of aU our vast acquisitions in physical science? ^^ 

After the Scienza Nuova,-^- read Spinosa, Be Mo- 
narchia ex rationis pr{2Scri^to,'\ They differed — Vico 
in thinking that society tended to monarchy ; Spinosa 
in thinking it tended to democracy. Now, Spinosa^s 
ideal democracy was realised by a contemporary — ^not 
in a nation, for that is impossible, but in a sect — I 
mean by George I^ox and his Quakers. J 



April 24, 1832. 
Colours. 

r^ OLOUES may best be expressed by a heptad, the 
^ largest possible formula for tilings finite, as the 
pentad is the smallest possible form. Indeed, the 
heptad of things finite is in aU cases reducible to the 

* See Michelet's Principes de ia PMlosopMe de THistoire, &c. Paris, 
1827. An admirable analysis of Vico. — Ed. 
t Tractatus Politici, c. vi. 
% Spinosa died in 1677; Fox in 1681.— Ed. 



172 



COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TAXK. 



pentad. The adorable tetractys^ or tetrad, is the 
formula of God ; which, again, is reducible into, and 
is, in reahty, the same with, the Trinity. Take 
colours thus : — 

Prothesis. , , ^ 

Red, or Colour «»t 6§<»%»7y. 



Me^othesis, or Indifference of 
Red and Yellow = Orange. 



Thesis = Yellow. 2 



To wliich you must add 




Indigo, Violet = Indifference of 
Red and Blue. 



3 Blue == Antithesis. 



which is a spurious or artificial 
synthesis of Yellow and Blue. 



April 28, 1832. 
Destruction of Jerusalem, — Epic Poem, 

THHE destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject 
-■- now remaining for an epic poem; a subject 
which, like Milton^s FaU of Man, should interest all 
Christendom, as the Homeric War of Troy interested 
all Greece. There would be difficulties, as there are 
in all subjects; and they must be mitigated and 
thrown into the shade, as Milton has done with the 
numerous difficulties in the Paradise Lost. But there 
would be a greater assemblage of grandeur and splen- 
dour than can now be found in any other theme. As 
for the old mythology, incredulus odi ; and yet there 
must be a mythology, or a 5'^^<25^-mythology, for an 
epic poem. Here there would be the completion of 
the prophecies — the termination of the first revealed 



ASGILL AND DEFOE. 173 

national religion under the violent assault of Paganism, 
itself the immediate forerunner and condition of the 
spread of a revealed mundane religion; and then 
you would have the character of the Eoman and the 
Jew, and the awfulness, the completeness, the justice. 
I schemed it at twenty-five ; but, alas ! venturum 
exjpectat, 

April 29, 1832. 
Vox Populi, Vox Dei. — Black, 

I NEVER said that the vox populi was of course 
the vox Dei, It may be ; but it may be, and 
with equal probability, a prion, vox Diaboli. That 
the voice of ten millions of men calling for the 
same thing, is a spirit, I believe ; but whether that 
be a spirit of Heaven or Hell, I can only know by 
trying the thing called for by the prescript of reason 

and God^s will. 

Black is the negation of colour in its greatest 
energy. Without lustre, it indicates or represents 
vacuity, as, for instance, in the dark mouth of a 
cavern ; add lustre, and it will represent the highest 
degree of solidity, as in a polished ebony box. 

In finite forms there is no real and absolute identity. 
God alone is identity. In the former, the prothesis 
is a bastard prothesis, a quasi identity only. 



April 30, 1832. 
Asgill and Defoe. 

I KNOW no genuine Saxon English superior to 
AsgUrs. I think his and Defoe^s irony often 
finer than Swift^s. 



174 COLEEIDGE^'S TABLE TALK. 



May 1, 1832. 
Home Toohe, — Fox and Pitt, 

TTOEKE TOOKE^S advice to the Friends of the 
^^ People was profound : — '^ If you wish to be 
powerful^ pretend to be powerful/^ 



Pox and Pitt constantly played into each other^s 
hands. Mr. Stuart^ of the Courier^ who was very 
knowing in the pohtics of the day^ soon found out 
the gross lies and impostures of that club as to its 
numbers and told Pox so. Yet^ instead of disclaim- 
ing them and exposing the pretence^ as he ought to 
have done^ Pox absolutely exaggerated their numbers 
and sinister intentions ; and Pitt, who also knew the 
lie, took him at liis word, and argued against him 
triumphantly on his own premisses, 

Pox^s Gallicism, too, was a treasury of weapons 
to Pitt. He could never conceive the Prench 
right without making the EngHsh wrong. Ah ! I 
remember — 

it vex'd my soul to see 

So grand a cause, so proud a realm 
With Goose and Goody at the helm ; 
Who long ago had fallen asunder 
But for their rivals' baser blunder, 
The coward whine and Frenchified 
Slaver and slang of the other side ! 



May 2, 1832. 
Homer. 

I CANNOT say that I thought Mr. Horner a man 
of genius. He seemed to me to be one of those 
men who have not very extended minds, but who 



PROFESSOR PARK. 175 

know what they know very well — shallow streams^ 
and clear because they are shallow. There was great 
goodness about liim. 



May 3, 1832. 
Adiaphojn. — Citizens and CJu'istians. 

is one of those men who go far to shake 

my faith in a future state of existence ; I mean^ on 
account of the difficulty of knowing where to place 
him. I could not bear to roast him; he is not so 
bad as all that comes to : but then^ on the other 
hand^ to have to sit down v^itli such a fellow in the 
very lowest pot-house of heaven is utterly inconsis- 
tent with the behef of that place being a place of 
happiness for me. 

In two points of view I reverence man ; firsts as a 
citizen^ a part of, or in order to, a nation; and, 
secondl}^, as a Christian. If men are neither the 
one nor the other, but a mere aggregation of indi- 
vidual bipeds, who acknowledge no national unity, 
nor believe with me in Christ, I have no more per- 
sonal sympathy with them than with the dust beneath 
my feet. 

May 21, 1832. 

Professor Parle. — Englisli Constitution — Democraxy. — Milton and 
Sidney. 

PEOFESSOE PAEK talks ^ about its being very 
dovMful whether the constitution described by 
Blackstone ever in fact existed. In the same manner, 

* In his " Dogmas of the Constitution, four Lectures on the Theory and 
Practice of the Constitution, delivered at the King's College, London," 1832. 
Lecture I. There was a stiffness, and an occasional uncouthness in Professor 



176 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

I suppose, it is doubtful whether the moon is made of 
green cheese, or whether the souls of Welchmen do, 
in point of fact, go to heaven on the backs of mites. 
Blackstone^s AYas the age of shallow law. Monarchy, 
aristocracy, and democracy, as such, exclude each 
the other : but if the elements are to interpenetrate, 
how absurb to call a lump of sugar hydrogen, 
oxygen, and carbon ! nay, to take three lumps, and 
call the first hydrogen ; the second, oxygen ; and the 
third, carbon ? Don't you see that each is in all, 
and all in each ? 

The democracy of England, before the Eeform Bill, 
was, where it ought to be, in the corporations, the 
vestries, the joint-stock companies, &c. The power, 
in a democracy, is in focal points, without a centre ; 
and in proportion as such democratical power is 
strong, the strength of the central government ought 
to be intense — otherwise the nation will fall to pieces. 

We have just now incalculably increased the demo- 
cratical action of the people, and, at the same time, 
weakened the executive power of the government. 



It was the error of Milton, Sidney, and others of 
that age, to tlnnk it possible to construct a purely 
aristocratical government, defecated of all passion, 
and ignorance, and sordid motive. The truth is, such ' 
a government would be weak from its utter want of 
sympathy with the people to be governed by it. 

Park's style ; but his two works, tlie one just mentioned, and his " Contre- 
Projet to the Humphreysian Code," are full of original views and vigorous 
reasonings. To those who wished to see the profession of the law assume a 
more scientific character than for the most part it has hitherto done in 
England, the early death of John James Park was a very great loss. — Ed. 



DE VI MIXIMORUM. LUTHER. 177 

May 25, 1832. 
De Vi Minimorum. — Hahnemann. — Luther. 

MERCUEY strongly illustrates the theory de vi 
mhiwiorum. Divide five grains into fifty doses, 
and they may poison you irretrievably. I don^t be- 
lieve in all that Hahnemann says ; but he is a fine 
fellow, and, like most Germans, is not altogether 
wrong, and Hke them also, is never altogether right. 

Six volumes of translated selections from Luther^'s 
works, two being from his Letters, would be a dehght- 
ful work. The translator should be a man deeply 
imbued with his Bible, with the EngHsh writers from 
Henry the Seventh to Edward the Sixth, the Scotch 
divines of the IGtli century, and T\ith the old racy 
German.* 

Hugo de Saint Yictor,t Luther^ s favourite di^dne, 
was a wonderful man, who, in the 1 2th century, the 
jubilant age of papal dominion, nursed the lamp of 
Platonic mysticism in the spiiit of the most refined 
Christianity. 

* Mr. Coleridge was fond of pressing this proposed publication : — " I can 
scarcely conceive/' lie says in the Friend, '' a more delightful volume than 
might be made from Luther's letters, especially those that were written from 
the Warteburg, if they were translated in the simple, sinewy, idiomatic. 
hearty mother tongue of the original. A difficult task I admit, and scarcely 
possible for any man, however great his talents in other respects, whose 
favourite reading has not lain among the English writers from Edward the 
Sixth to Charles the First." Vol. i. p. 235. n.— Ed. 

t This celebrated man was a Fleming, and a member of the Augustinian 
society of St. Victor. He died at Paris in 1142, aged forty-four. His age 
considered, it is sufficient praise for him that Protestants and Eomanists 
both claim him for their o^-n on the subject of transubstantiation.— Ed. 



178 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 

June 9, 1832. 

Sympathy of Old Greek and Latin with English, — Roman Mind. — 

War. 

TP you take Sophocles^ Catullus, Lucretius, the 
-*- better parts of Cicero, and so on, jou may, just 
with two or three exceptions arising out of the different 
idioms as to cases, translate page after page into 
good mother EngHsh, word by word, without altering 
the order ; but you cannot do so with Virgil or Tibul- 
lus : if you attempt it, you will make nonsense. 

There is a remarkable power of the picturesque in 
the fragments we have of Ennius, Actius, and other 
very old Eoman writers. This vivid manner was 
lost in the Augustan age. 

Much as the Eomans owed to Greece in the begin- 
ning, whilst their mind was, as it were, tuning itself 
to an after-effort of its own music, it suffered more in 
proportion by the influence of Greek Hterature sub- 
sequently, when it was already mature and ought to 
have worked for itself. It then became a superfeta- 
tion upon, and not an ingredient in, the national 
character. With the exception of the stern prag- 
matic historian and the moral satirist, it left nothing 
original to the Latin Muse.* 

A nation, to be great, ought to be compressed in 
its increment by nations more civilized than itself — as 
Greece by Persia ; and Rome by Etruria, the ItaHan 
states, and Carthage. I remember Commodore De- 

* Perhaps it left letter'-RTiting also. Even if the Platonic epistles are 
taken as genuine, which Mr. Coleridge, to my surprise, was inclined to 
believe, they can hardly interfere, I think, with the uniqueness of the truly 
inccmparahle collections from the correspondence of Cicero and Pliny. — Ed. 



CHARM FOR CRAMP. 179 

catur saying to me at Malta^ that he deplored the 
cccupation of Louisiana by the United States^ and 
wished that province had been possessed by England. 
He thought that if the United States got hold of 
Canada by conquest or cession^ the last chance of his 
country becoming a great compact nation would be lost. 

War in republican Rome was the offspring of its 
intense aristocracy of spirit^ and stood to the state in 
lieu of trade. As long as there was anything ah 
extra to conquer, the state advanced : when nothing 
remained but what was Roman^ then^ as a matter of 
course, civil war began. 



June 10, 1832. 
Charm for Cramp. 

TTTHEN I was a little boy at the Blue-coat School, 
^ ' there was a charm for one^s foot when asleep ; 
and I beheve it had been in the school since its foun- 
dation, in the time of Edward the Sixth. The march 
of intellect has probably now exploded it. It ran 
thus : — 

Foot ! foot ! foot ! is fast asleep ! 

Thumb ! thumb ! thumb ! in spittle we steep : 

Crosses three we make to ease us, 

Two for the thieves, and one for Christ Jesus ! 

And the same charm served for a cramp in the leg, 

with the following substitution : — 

The devil is tying a knot in my leg ! 
Mark, Luke, and John, unloose it I beg ! — 
Crosses three, &c. 

And really upon getting out of bed, where the cramp 
most frequently occurred, pressing the sole of the foot 
on the cold floor, and then repeating this charm with 

N 2 



180 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

the acts configurative thereupon prescribed^ I can safely 
afiirm that I do not remember an instance in which 
the cramp did not go away in a few seconds. 

I should not wonder if it were equally good for a 
stitch in the side ; but I cannot say I ever tried it for 
that. 



July 7, 1832. 
Greek. — Dual, Neuter Plural, and Verb Singular, — Theta. 

TT is hardly possible to conceive a language more 
-L perfect than the Greek. If you compare it with 
the modern European tongues^ in the points of the 
position and relative bearing of the vowels and con- 
sonants on each other^ and of the variety of termina- 
tions^ it is incalculably before all in the former 
particulars,, and only equalled in the last by German. 
But it is in variety of termination alone that the Ger- 
man surpasses the other modern languages as to 
sound; for^ as to position^ Nature seems to have 
dropped an acid into the language when a-forming^ 
which curdled the vowels and made all the consonants 
flow together. The Spanish is excellent for variety of 
termination ; the Itahan^ in this particular, the most 
deficient. Italian prose is excessively monotonous. 



It is very natural to have a dual, duality being a 
conception quite distinct from plurality. Most very 
primitive languages have a dual, as the Greek, Welch, 
and the native Chilese, as you will see in the Abbe 
Raynal. 

The neuter plural governing, as they call it, a verb 
singular is one of the many instances in Greek of the 
inward and metaphysic grammar resisting successfully 



TALENTED. 181 



the t}Tanny of formal grammar. In truths there may 
be Multeity in tilings ; but there can only be Plurality 
in persons. 

Observe also^ that^ in fact, a neuter noun in Greek 
has no real nominative case, though it has a formal 
one, that is to say, the same word with the accusative. 
The reason is — a tiling has no subjectivity or nomi- 
native case : it exists only as an object in the accusative 
or obHque case. 

It is extraordinary that the Germans should not 
have retained or assumed the two beautifully discrimi- 
nated sounds of the soft and hard theta ; as in tAy 
tlwiights — the thin ether that, &c. How particularly 
fine the hard theta is in an English termination, as in 
that grand word — Death — for which the Germans 
gutturize a sound that puts you in mind of nothing 
but a loathsome toad. 



July 8, 1832. 
Talented, 

T REGEET to see that vile and barbarous vocable 
-^ talented, stealing out of the newspapers into the 
leading reviews and most respectable publications of 
fhe day. Why not shillinged, farthinged, tenpenced, 
&c. ? The formation of a participle passive from a 
noun, is a licence that nothing but a very peculiar 
felicity can excuse. If mere convenience is to justify 
such attempts upon the idiom, you cannot stop 
till the language becomes, in the proper sense of 
the word, corrupt. Most of these pieces of slang 
come from America.* 

* See " eventuate,'''' in Mr, Washington living's " Tour on the Prairies,' 
passim. — Ed. 



182 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Never take an iambus as a Christian name. A 
trochee, or tribrach, will do very well. Edith and 
Eotha are my favourite names for women. 



July 9, 1832. 
Homer. — ValcJcenaer, 

I HAVE the firmest conviction that Homer is a 
mere traditional synonyme with, or figure for, the 
Iliad. You cannot conceive for a moment anything 
about the poet, as you call him, apart from that poem. 
Difference in men there was in a degree, but not in 
kind; one man was, perhaps, a better poet than 
another ; but he was a poet upon the same ground 
and with the same feehngs as the rest. 

The want of adverbs in the Ihad is very charac- 
teristic. With more adverbs there would have been 
some subjectivity, or subjectivity would have made 
them. 

The Greeks were then just on the verge of the 
bursting forth of individuality. 

Yalckenaer''s treatise* on the interpolation of the 
Classics by the later Jews and early Christians is well 
worth your perusal as a scholar and critic. 



July 13, 1832. 
Principles and Facts, — Schmidt. 

T HAYE read all the famous histories, and, I beheve, 
-■- some history of every country and nation that is, 
or ever existed j but I never did so for the story itself 
as a story. The only thing interesting to me was the 

* Diatribe de Aristobulo Judceo. — Ed. 



PRINCIPLES AND FACTS. SCHMIDT. 183 

principles to be evolved from, and illustrated by, the 
facts.* After I had gotten my principles, I pretty 
generally left the facts to take care of themselves. I 
never could remember any passages in books, or the 
particulars of events, except in the gross. I can refer 
to them. To be sure, I must be a different sort of 
man from Herder, who once was seriously annoyed 
with himself, because, in recounting the pedigree of 
some German royal or electoral familj^, he missed some 
one of those worthies and could not recall the name. 



Sclunidtf was a Eomanist; but I have generally 
found liim candid, as indeed almost aU the Austrians 
are. They are what is caUed good Catholics ; but, like 

* " The true origin of human events is so little susceptible of that kind of 
evidence which can compel our belief; so many are the disturbing forces 
which, in every cycle or ellipse of changes, modify the motion given by the 
first projection; and every age has, or imagines it has, its own circum- 
stances, which render past experience no longer applicable to the present 
case; that there will never be wanting answers, and explanations, and 
specious flatteries of hope, to persuade and perplex its government, that the 
history of the past is inapplicable to their case. And no wonder, if we read 
history for the facts, instead of reading it for the sake of the general prin- 
ciples, which are to the facts as the root and sap of a tree to its leaves ; and 
no wonder if history so read should find a dangerous rival in novels ; nay, if 
the latter should be preferred to the former, on the score even of probability. 
I well remember that, when the examples of former Jacobins, as Julius 
Csesar, Cromwell, and the like, were adduced in France and England, at the 
commencement of the French consulate, it was ridiculed as pedantry and 
pedants' ignorance, to fear a repetition of usurpation and military despotism 
at the close of the enlightened eighteenth century ! Even so, in the very dawn 
of the late tempestuous day, when the revolutions of Corcyra, the proscrip- 
tions of the reformers Marius, Csesar, &c., and the direful effects of the 
levelling tenets in the peasants' war in Germany (differenced from the tenets 
of the first French constitution only by the mode of wording them, the 
figures of speech being borrowed in the one instance from theology, and in 
the other from modern metaphysics), were urged on the convention and its 
vindicators ; the magi of the day, the true citizens of the world, the plusquam 
per/ecti of patriotism, gave us set proofs that similar results were impossible, 
and that it was an insult to so philosophical an age, to so enlightened a 
nation, to dare direct the public eye towards them as to lights of warning." 
— Statesman's Manual, p. 14. 

t Michael Ignatius Schmidt, the author of the History of the Germans. 
He died in the latter end of the last century.— Ed. 



184 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

our Charles the Second^ they never let their religious 
bigotry interfere with their political well-doing. K ai ser 
is a most pious son of the churchy yet he always keeps 
his papa in good order. 



July 20, 1832. 
Puritans and Jacobins, 

TT was God^s mercy to our age that our Jacobins 
-■- were infidels and a scandal to all sober Christians. 
Had they been like the old Puritans, they would 
have trodden church and king to the dust — at least 
for a time. 

For one mercy I owe thanks beyond all utterance, 
— that, with all my gastric and bowel distempers, my 
head hath ever been like the head of a mountain in 
blue air and sunshine. 



July 21, 1832. 
Wordsworth. 

I HAVE often wished that the first two books of 
the Excursion had been published separately, 
under the name of '^ The Deserted Cottage.'''^ They 
would have formed, what indeed they are, one of the 
most beautiful poems in the language. 

Can dialogues in verse be defended? I cannot 
but think that a great philosophical poet ought 
always to teach the reader himseK as from himself. 
A poem does not admit argumentation, though it 
does admit development of thought. In prose there 
may be a difference; though I must confess that. 



WORDSWORTn. 185 



even in Plato and Cicero, I am always vexed that the 
authors do not say what they have to say at once in 
their own persons. The introductions and little 
urbanities, are, to be sure, very delightful in their 
way ; I would not lose them ; but I have no admira- 
tion for the practice of ventriloquizing through another 
man^s mouth. 

I cannot help regretting that Wordsworth did not 
first pubHsh his tliirteen books on the growth of an 
individual mind — superior, as I used to think, upon 
the whole, to the Excursion. You may judge how I 
felt about them by my ovm poem upon the occasion.* 
Then the plan laid out, and, I believe, partly sug- 
gested by me, was, that Wordsworth should assume 
the station of a man in mental repose, one whose 
principles were made up, and so prepared to deliver 
upon authority a system of philosophy. He was to 
treat man as man, — a subject of eye, ear, touch, and 
taste, in contact with external nature, and informing 
the senses from the mind, and not compounding a 
mind out of the senses ; then he was to describe the 
pastoral and other states of society, assuming some- 
thing of the Juvenalian spirit as he approached the 
high civilisation of cities and towns, and opening a 
melancholy picture of the present state of degeneracy 
and vice ; thence he was to infer and reveal the proof 
of, and necessity for, the whole state of man and 
society being subject to, and illustrative of, a redemp- 

* Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 206. It is not too mncli to say of this beantlfnl 
poem, and yet it is difficult to say more, that it is at once worthy of the poet, 
his subject, and his object : — 

" An Orphic song indeed, 
A song divine of high and passionate thoughts 
To their own music chanted." — Ed. 



186 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

tive process in operation^ showing how this idea 
reconciled all the anomalies^ and promised future 
glory and restoration. Something of this sort was^ I 
think^ agreed on. It is, in substance^ what I have 
been all my life doing in my system of philosophy. 

I think Wordsworth possessed more of the genius 
of a great philosophic poet than any man I ever knew, 
or, as I believe, has existed in England since Milton ; 
but it seems to me that he ought never to have 
abandoned the contemplative position^ which is pecu- 
liarly — perhaps I might say exclusively — fitted for 
him. His proper title is Spectator ah extra. 



July 23, 1832. 
French Revolution, 

NO man was more enthusiastic than I was for 
France and the Revolution : it had all my wishes, 
none of my expectations. Before 1793, 1 clearly saw 
and often enough stated in public, the horrid delusion, 
the vile mockery of the whole affair.* When some 

* " Forgive me, Freedom ! O forgive those dreams ! 
I hear thy voice, I hear thj loud lament, 
From bleak Helvetia's icy cavern sent— 
I hear thy groans upon her blood-stain'd streams ! 
Heroes, that for your peaceful country perish' d, 
And ye that, fleeing, spot your mountain snows 
With bleeding wounds ; forgive me, that I cherish'd 
One thought that ever blest your cruel foes ! 
To scatter rage and traitorous guilt, 
Where Peace her jealous home had built; 
A patriot race to disinherit 
Of all that made her stormy wilds so dear : 
And with inexpiable spirit 

To taint the bloodless freedom of the mountaineer- 
O France, that mockest Heaven, adulterous, blind. 
And patriot only in pernicious toils, 
Are these thy boasts, champion of human-kind ? 



INFANT SCHOOLS. 1S7 



one said in my brother Jameses presence* that I was 
a Jacobin^ he very well observed, — ^^ No ! Samuel is 
no Jacobm ; he is a hot-headed Moravian ! ^^ Indeed, 
I was in the extreme opposite pole. 



July 24, 1832. 

Infant Schools, 

T HAYE no faith in act of parHament reform. All 
-^ the great — the permanently great — tilings that 
have been achieved in the world, have been so achieved 
by indi^dduals, working from the instinct of genius or 
of goodness. The rage now-a-days is all the other way : 
the individual is supposed capable of nothing; there 
must be organisation, classification, machinery, &c., 
as if the capital of national morality could be increased 
by making a joint stock of it. Hence you see these 
infant schools so patronised by the bishops and others. 

To mix with kings in the low lust of sway, 
Yell in the hunt and share the murderous prey — 
To insult the shrine of Liberty with spoils 
From freemen torn — to tempt and to betray ? — 

The Sensual and the Dark rebel in vain, 

Slaves by their own compulsion ! In mad game 

They burst their manacles, and wear the name 

Of freedom, graven on a heavier chain ! 

O Liberty ! with profitless endeavour 

Have I pursued thee many a weary hour ; 

But thou nor swell" st the victor's train, nor ever 

Didst breathe thy soul in forms of human power. 

Alike from all, howe"er they praise thee, 

(Nor prayer, nor boastful name delays thee,) 

Alike from priestcraft's harpy minions, 

And factious blasphemy's obscener slaves, 

Thou sj>eedest on thy subtle j)inions, 

TTie guide of homeless winds, and playmaM of the vjaves!^* 

France, an Ode. Poetical Works, vol. i. p. 130. 
* A soldier of the old cavalier stamp, to whom the King was the symbol 
of the majesty, as the Church was of the life, of the nation, and who would 
most assuredly have taken arms for one or the other against all the Houses 
of Commons or committees of public safety in the world. — Ed. 



188 COLERLDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

who think them a grand invention. Is it found that 
an infant-school child^ who has been bawling all day 
a column of the multiplication-table^ or a verse from 
the Bible^ grows up a more dutiful son or daughter to 
its parents ? Are domestic charities on the increase 
amongst families under this system? In a great 
town^ in our present state of society^ perhaps such 
schools may be a justifiable expedient — a choice of 
the lesser evil ; but as for driving these establislmaents 
into the country villages^ and breaking up the cottage 
home education^ I think it one of the most miserable 
mistakes which the well-intentioned people of the day 
have yet made ; and they have made^ and are making, 
a good many, God knows. 



July 25, 1832. 

Mr, Coleridge^ 8 Philosophy. — Sublimity. — Solomon, — Madness. — 

C. Lamb. — Sforza's Decision. 

THE pith of my system is to make the senses out 
of the mind — not the mind out of the senses, as 

Locke did. 

Could you ever discover any thing sublime, in our 
sense of the term, in the classic Greek literature ? I 
never could. Sublimity is Hebrew by birth. 



I should conjecture that the Proverbs and Ecclesi- 
astes were written, or, perhaps, rather collected, about 
the time of Xehemiah. The language is Hebrew 
with Chaldaic endings. It is totally unlike the 
language of Moses on the one hand, and of Isaiah on 
the other. 

Solomon introduced the commercial spirit into his 



FAITH AND BELIEF. 189 

t 

kingdom. I cannot tliink liis idolatry could have 
been much more^ in regard to liimself, than a state 
protection or toleration of the foreign worship. 

^Vhen a man mistakes liis thoughts for persons and 
things^ he is mad. A madman is properly so defined. 

Charles Lamb translated my motto Sermoni proj^riora 
by — ])ro][)erer for a sermon ! 

I was much amused some time ao^o bv readina; the 
pithy decision of one of the Sforzas of Milan^ upon 
occasion of a dispute for precedence between the 
lawyers and physicians of his capital; — Fr^ecedant 
fures — sequantur cariiijices, I hardly remember a 
neater thing. 

July 28, 1832. 
Faith and Belief. 

^HE sublime and abstruse doctrines of Christian 
-■- behef belong to the church ; but the faith of the 
individual^ centered in his hearty is or may be collateral 
to them.* Faith is subjective. I throw myself 
in adoration before God; acknowledge myself his 
creature, — simple, weak, lost ; and pray for help and 

* Mr. Coleridge used very frequently to insist upon the distinction betrveen 
belief and faith. He once told me, -^ith very great earnestness, that if he 
were that moment convinced — a conviction, the possibility of which, indeed, 
he could not realize to himself— that the New Testament was a forgery from 
beginning to end — wide as the desolation in his moral feelings would be, he 
should not abate one jot of his faith in God's power and mercy through some 
manifestation of his being towards man, either in time past or future, or in 
the hidden depths where time and space are not. This was, I believe, no 
more than a vivid expression of what he always maintained, that no man 
had attained to a full faith who did not recognize in the Scriptures a cor- 
respondency to his own nature, or see that Ms own powers of reason, will, 
and understanding were preconfigured to the reception of the Christian 
doctrines and promises. — Ed. 



190 COLEEIDGE S TABLE TALK. 

pardon tkrougli Jesus Christ : but when I rise from 
my knees^ T discuss the doctrine of the Trinity as I 
would a problem in geometry; in the same temper of 
mind, I mean, not by the same process of reasoning, 
of course. 



August 4, 1832. 

Dobrizhoffer,* 

T HAEDLT know anything more amusing than the 
-'- honest German Jesuitry of Dobrizhoffer. His 
chapter on the dialects is most valuable. He is sur- 
prised that there is no form for the infinitive, but 

* " He was a man of rarest qualities, 

"Who to this barbarous region had confined 
A spirit with the learned and the wise 
Worthy to take its place, and from mankind 
Receive their homage, to the immortal mind 
Paid in its just inheritance of fame. 
But he to humbler thoughts his heart inclined : 
From Gratz amid the Styrian hills he came. 
And Dobrizhoffer was the good man's honour'd name. 

" It was his evil fortune to behold 

The labours of his painful life destroyed ; 

His flock which he had brought within the fold 

Dispersed ; the work of ages render' d void, 

And all of good that Paraguay enjoy'd 

By blind and suicidal power o'erthrown. 

So he the years of his old age employ' d, 

A faithful chronicler, in handing down 
Names which he loved, and things well worthy to be known. 

" And thus when exiled from the dear-loved scene, 

In proud Vienna he beguiled the pain 

Of sad remembrance : and the empress-queen, 

That great Teresa, she did not disdain 

In gracious mood sometimes to entertain 

Discourse with him both pleasurable and sage ; 

And sure a willing ear she well might deign 

To one whose tales may equally engage 
The wondering mind of youth, the thoughtful heart of age. 

" But of his native speech, because well-nigh 
Disuse in him forgetfulness had wrought, 
In Latin he composed his history ; 
A garrulous, but a lively tale, and fraught 



SCOTCH AND ENGLISH. 191 

that they say^ — I wish^ (go, or eat, or drink, &c.) 
interposing a letter by way of copula, — forgetting his 
own German and the English, Avhich are, in truth, the 
same. The confident belief entertained by the Abi- 
pones of immortality, in connection with the utter 
absence in their minds of the idea of a God, is very 
remarkable. If Warburton were right, which he is 
not, the Mosaic scheme would be the exact converse. 
My dear daughter's translation of this book* is, in 
my judgment, unsurpassed for pure mother Enghsh 
by anything I have read for a long time. 



August 6, 1832. 
Scotch and English. — Criterion of Genius. — Dry den and Pope. 

T HAVE generally found a Scotchman with a little 
-^ hteratui'e very disagreeable. He is a superficial 
German or a dull Frenchman. The Scotch wiU 
attribute merit to people of any nation rather than 
the English; the English have a morbid habit of 

With matter of delight, and food for thought. 
And If he could in Merlin's glass have seen 
By whom his tones to speak our tongue were taught, 
The old man would have felt as pleased, I Aveen^ 
As when he won the ear of that great empress-queen. 

" Little he deem'd, when with his Indian hand 

He through the wilds set forth upon his way, 
A poet then unborn, and in a land 
Which had proscribed his order, should one day 
Take up from thence his moralizing lay. 
And, shape a song that, with no fiction drest, 
Should to his worth its grateful tribute pay, 
And sinking deep in many an English breast, 
Foster that faith divine that keeps the heart at rest." 

Southey's Tale of Paraguay, canto iii. st. 16. 

* "An Account of the Abipones, an Equestrian People of Paraguay 
From the Latin of Martin Dobrizhoffer, eighteen Years a Missionary in 
that Coimtry." — Vol. ii. p. 176. 



192 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

petting and praising foreigners of any sort^ to the 
unjust disparagement of tlieir own worthies. 

You will find this a good gage or criterion of 
genius^ — whether it progresses and evolves^ or only 
spins upon itself. Take Dryden^s Achitophel and 
Zimri^ — Shaftesbury and Buckingham ; every line 
adds to or modifies the character^ which is_, as it were^ 
a-building up to the very last verse; whereas^ in 
Pope^s Timon^ &c. the first two or three couplets 
contain all the pith of the character^ and the twenty 
or thirty lines that follow are so much evidence or 
proof of overt acts of jealousy^ or pride, or whatever 
it may be that is satirised. In like manner compare 
Charles LamVs exquisite criticisms on Shakspeare 
with Hazhtt^s round and round imitations of them. 



August 7, 1832. 
MiltOTi's disregard of Fainting, 

IT is very remarkable that in no part of his writings 
does Milton take any notice of the great painters 
of Italy, nor, indeed, of painting as an art; whilst 
every other page breathes his love and taste for music. 
Yet it is curious that, in one passage in the Paradise 
Lost, Milton has certainly copied ^q fresco of the 
Creation in the Sistine Chapel at Rome. I mean 
those lines — 

" now half appear'd 

The tawny lion, pawing to get free 

His hinder parts, then springs as broke from bonds, 

And rampant shakes hisbrmded mane ;"— &c.* 

an image which the necessities of the painter justified, 

* Par. Lost, book vii. ver. 463. 



BAPTISMAL SERVICE. 193 

but wliicli was wholly unworthy^ in my judgment^ of 
the enlarged powers of the poet. Adam bending over 
the sleeping Eve in the Paradise Lost,* and Dalilah 
approaching Samson, in the Agonistes.t are the only 
two proper pictui'es I remember in Milton. 



August 9, 1832. 
Baptismal Sen'ice. — Jews^ Division of the Scripture. — Sanskrit. 

ITHIXK the baptismal ser^^ice almost perfect. 
TTliat seems erroneous assumption in it to me, is 
harmless. None of the services of the Church affect 
me so much as this. T never could attend a christen- 
ing without tears bursting forth, at the sight of the 
helpless innocent in a pious clergyman^s arms. 



The Jews recognised three degTees of sanctity in 
their Scriptures : — first, the writings of Moses, who 



' so mucli the more 



His -vroiider -was to find unvaken d Eve 
With tresses discomposed, and glomng cheek, 
As through unquiet rest : he on his side 
Leaning, half raised, ^rith looks of cordial love 
Hung over her enamour" d, and beheld 
Beauty, -which, -whether -waking or asleep, 
Shot forth peculiar graces ; then, ^th voice 
Mild, as -when Zephyrus on Flora breathes, 
Her hand soft touching, -whisper d thus : A-wake, 
My fairest," &c. 

Book V. ver. 8. 
' But "vrho is this, -what thing of sea or land ? 
Female of sex it seems. 
That so bedeck' d, ornate, and gay, 
Comes this \ray sailing 
Like a stately ship 
Of Tarsus, bound for the isles 
Of Javan or Gadire, 

With all her bravery on, and tackle trim. 
Sails fiird, and streamers -wa-ving. 
Courted by all the -winds that hold them play; 
An amber-scent of odorous perfome 
Her harbinger, a damsel train behind ! " 



194 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

had the avToxlria; secondly^ the Prophets ; and, thirdly,, 
the Good Books. Philo^ amusingly enough, places his 
works somewhere between the second and third degrees. 

The claims of the Sanskrit for priority to the He- 
brew as a language, are ridiculous. 



August 11, 1832. 
ffedod, — Virgil. — Genius Metaphysical, — Don Quixote. 

T LIKE reading Hesiod, meaning the Works and 
-*- Days. If every verse is not poetry, it is, at least, 
good sense, which is a great deal to say. 



There is nothing real in the Georgics, except, to be 
sure, the verse.* Mere didactics of practice, unless 
seasoned with the personal interests of the time or 
author, are inexpressibly duU to me. Such didactic 
poetry as that of the Works and Days followed 
naturally upon legislation and the first ordering of 
municipalities. 

AU genius is metaphysical; because the ultimate 
end of genius is ideal, however it may be actualised 
by incidental and accidental circumstances. 



Don Quixote is not a man out of his senses, but a 
a man in whom the imagination and the pure reason 
are so powerful as to make him disregard the evidence 
of sense when it opposed their conclusions. Sancho 

* I used to fancy Mr. Coleridge paulo iniquior Virgilio, and told him so ; 
to which he replied, that, like all Eton men, I swore per Maronem. This 
was far enough from being the case; but I acknowledge that Mr. C.'s 
apparent indifference to the tenderness and dignity of Virgil excited my 
surprise.— Ed. 



STEINMETZ. KEATS. 195 

is the comnion sense of the social man-animal, unen- 
lightened and unsanctified by the reason. You see 
how he reverences his master at the very time he is 
cheating liim. 



August 14, 1832. 
Steinmetz. — Keats. 



POOE dear Steinmetz is gone, — his state of sure 
blessedness accelerated; or, it may be, he is 
buried in Christ, and there in that mysterious depth 
grows on to the spirit of a just man made perfect ! 
Could I for a moment doubt this, the grass would 
become black beneath my feet, and tliis earthly frame 
a charnel-house. I never knew any man so illustrate 
the difference between the feminine and the effeminate. 



A loose, slacks not well-dressed youth met IMr. 

and myself in a lane near Highgate. knew 

liim, and spoke. It was Keats. He was introduced 
to me, and stayed a minute or so. After he had left 
us a Httle way, he came back and said: *'*'Let me 
carry away the memory, Coleridge, of ha^dng pressed 
your hand !^^ — ^' There is death in that hand,^^ I said 
to , when Keats was gone ; yet tliis was, I be- 
lieve, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.* 

* It was to Ms friend, Mr. J. H. Green, that Mr. Coleridge addressed the 
remark recorded, on the young poet's hand ; and from him I learned that the 
interview took place certainly a year or two after 1817, when he and Mr. C. 
were first introduced to each other, and very probably as late as the spring 
of 1819, the time when Keats composed his exquisite Ode to a Nightingale, 
about which Mr. Leigh Hunt says : *' The poet had then his mortal illness 
upon him, and knew it.'' That "sensuous and impassioned" poem, in its 
feverish vividness and intensity, does indeed seem in some sort to attest 
incipient consumption. But neither this nor any other utterance had, as yet, 
announced the sorrowful fact that a fatal malady was already loosening the 
silver cord that bound '*' the gentle child Adonais " to this earth, the loveli- 
ness of which, as Shellev, in his splendid ''Lament,'' afPa-ms. he "made 

o 2 



196 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



August 16, 1832. 
Christ's Hospital. — Bowyer. 

THHE discipline at Christ^s Hospital in my time was 
-*- ultra- Spartan ; all domestic ties were to be put 
aside. ^^ Boy ! '^ I remember Bowyer saying to me 
once when I was crying the first day of my return 
after the hohdays^ ^^ Boy ! the school is your father ! 
Boy ! the school is your mother ! Boy ! the school 
is your brother ! the school is your sister ! the school 
is your first cousin^ and your second cousin^ and all the 
rest of your relations ! Let^s have no more crying V 



No tongue can express good Mrs. Bowyer. Yal le 
Grice and I were once going to be flogged for some 
domestic misdeed^ and Bowyer was thundering away 
at us by way of prologue^ when Mrs. B. looked in^ 
and said^ '^Plog them soundly^ sir, I beg!^^ This 
saved us. Bowyer was so nettled at the interruption 
that he growled out, '^ Away, woman ! away ! ^^ and 
we were let off. 

more lovely," setting it forth in verse of such a luxuriant summer flush of 
beauty, as hardly any other poet's spring of life had produced. 

" The hand of Keats felt to Coleridge clammy and cold," said Mr. Green, 
pursuing his remembrances of the subject, " like the hand of a dead man. I 
knew the young poet from his having been apprenticed to my father-in-law 
at Southgate. On approaching us in the lane, he asked if I would introduce 
him to Mr. Coleridge. * Yes, certainly,' I said. We talked of all this to 
Mr. Gillman on our return to the house." 

Mr. M. Milnes, in a note to the " Life and Letters of Keats," speaks as if 
he supposed that my father's observation had been represented as having 
teen made to Mr. L. Hunt, and adds : " This was at the period when Keats 
first knew Mr. Hunt, and was in perfect health," all which is a little cluster 
of mistakes. My father was not acquainted with Mr. Hunt when he resided 
at Highgate, as that gentleman himself implies in a sentence of his " Fancy 
and Imagination," which contains a genial and pleasing critique on Cole- 
ridge's poetry ; and, according to the Memoir, Keats first knew Mr. Hunt 
early in 1816, a year before the time when Mr. Green first knew Mr. Cole- 
ridge, and long before the meeting really took place. — S. C. 



ST. Paul's melita. 197 

AoGUST 28, 1832. 
St. Paul's Melita. 
n^HE belief that Malta is the island on which St. 
-^ Paul was wrecked^ is so rooted in the common 
Maltese^ and is cherished with such a superstitious 
nationality, that the Government would run the 
chance of exciting a tumult, if it, or its representa- 
tives, unwarily ridiculed it. The supposition itself is 
quite absurd. 'Not to argue the matter at length, 
consider these few conclusive facts : — The narrative 
speaks of the ^^barbarous people,^'' and ^^barbarians,'' * 
of the island. Now, our Malta was at that time fully 
peopled a;id highly civilised, as we may surely infer 
from Cicero and other writers.f A viper comes out 

* Acts xxvii. 2 and 4. Mr. C. seemed to think that the Greek words had 
reference to something more than the fact of the islanders not speaking 
Latin or Greek; the classical meaning of (Su^Qxeoi. — Ed. 

Upwards of a century before the reign of Nero, Cicero speaks at con- 
siderable length of our Malta in one of the Verrine orations. See Act. ii. 
lib. iv. c. 46. " Insula est Melita, judices," &c. There was a town, and Verres 
had established in it a manufactory of the fine cloth or cotton stuffs, the 
Melitensis vestis, for which the island is uniformly celebrated ; — 

" Fertilis est Melite sterili vicina Cocyrse 
Insula, quam Libyci verberat unda freti." 

Ovid. Fast. iii. 567. 
And Silius Italicus has — 



■ " telaque i 



Lanigera Melite." 

Punic, xiv. 251. 

Yet it may have been cotton after all — the present product of Malta. Cicero 
describes an ancient temple of Juno situated on a promontory near the town, 
so famous and revered, that, even in the time of Masinissa. at least 150 years 
B. c, that prince had religiously restored some relics which his admiral had 
taken from it. The plunder of this very temple is an article of accusation 
against Yerres ; and a deputation of Maltese (legatl Ilelitenses) came to Rome 
to establish the charge. These are all the facts, I think, which can be 
gathered from Cicero ; because I consider his expression of nudatcB urhes^ in 
the working up of this article, a piece of rhetoric. Strabo merely marks the 
position of Melita, and says that the lap-dogs called xwi^iy. IsliXiToCla, were 
sent from this island, though some writers attribute them to the other Melite 
in the Adriatic (lib. vi.). Diodorus, however, a Sicilian himself by birth. 



198 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

from the sticks upon the fire being lighted : the men 
are not surprised at the appearance of the snake^ but 
imagine first a murderer^ and then a god from the 
harmless attack. Now, in our Malta there are, I may 
say, no snakes at all; which, to be sure, the Maltese 
attribute to St. PauFs having cursed them away. 
Melita in the Adriatic was a perfectly barbarous island 
as to its native population, and was, and is now, in- 
fested ^ith serpents. Besides, the context shows that 
the scene is in the Adriatic. 



The Maltese seem to have preserved a fondness 
and taste for architecture from the time of the knights 
— naturally enough occasioned by the incomparable 
materials at hand.^ 



August 19, 1832. 
English and German. — Best state of Society, 

TT may be doubted whether a composite language 
^ like the English, is not a happier instrument of 
expression than a homogeneous one like the German. 
We possess a wonderful richness and variety of 
modified meanings in our Saxon and Latin quasi- 

gives the following remarkable testimony as to the state of the island in his 
time, which, it will be remembered, was considerably before the date of St. 
Paul's shipwreck. " There are three islands to the south of Sicily, each of 
which has a city or town {ttoXiv), and harbours fitted for the safe reception of 
ships. The first of these is Melite, distant about 800 stadia from Syracuse, 
and possessing several harbours of surpassing excellence. Its inhabitants 
are rich and luxurious {rob? xocroixovvroe,? reels ovtrixis iv^ctt/ijc^voe,?). There 
are artisans of every kind [TrccvTo^ocirovs toTh k^yatrloiis) ; the best are those 
who weave cloth of a singular fineness and softness. The houses are 
worthy of admiration for their superb adornment with eaves and brilliant 
whitewashing {olyJoc? a^ioXoyr^v; xoct zoiriirfiiva.(rju,ivocs ^ikortfjLOj? yiitrcoig xoii 
y,ovia.u(x,(ri ^loirroTi^ov)^ — Lib. V. c. 12. Mela (ii. c. 7) and Pliny (iii. 14), 
simply mark the position. — Ed. 

* The passage which I have cited from Diodorus, shows that the origin 
was much earlier. — Ed. 



philosopher's ordinary language. 199 

syiionymes^ which the Germans have not. For "the 
pomp 2Cii^ prodigality of Heaven/^ the Germans must 
have said, " the si^endthiftness!^'^- Shakspeare is 
particularly happy in liis use of the Latin sjnionymes, 
and in distinguisliing between them and the Saxon. 

That is the most excellent state of society in which 
the patriotism of the citizen ennobles, but does not 
merge, the individual energy of the man. 



September 1, 1832. 
Great Minds Androgynous. — Philosopher's ordAnary Language, 

IN" chemistry and nosology, by extending the degree 
to a certain point, the constituent proportion may 
be destroyed, and a new kind produced. 



I have known strong minds, with imposing, un- 
doubting, Cobbett-like maimers ; but I have never met 
a great mind of tliis sort. And of the former, they 
are at least as often wrong as right. The truth is, a 
great mind must be androgynous. Great minds — 
Swedenborg^s for instance — are never wrong, but in 
consequence of being in the right, but imperfectly. 

A philosopher's ordinary language and admissions, 
in general conversation or writings ad populum, are as 
his watch compared with his astronomical timepiece. 
He sets the former by the town-clock, not because he 
beheves it right, but because his neighbours and his 
cook go by it. 

* Verschwendung, I suppose. — Ed 



200 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



January 2, 1833. 

Juries. — Barristers^ and Physicians'' Fees. — Quacks. — Ccesarean 
Operation. — Inherited Disease, 

I CERTAINLY think that juries would be more 
J- conscientious, if they were allowed a larger dis- 
cretion. But, after all, juries cannot be better than 
the mass out of which they are taken. And if juries 
are not honest and single-minded, they are the worst, 
because the least responsible, instruments of judicial 
or popular tyranny. 

I should be sorry to see the honorary character of 
the fees of barristers and physicians done away with. 
Though it seems a shadowy distinction, I believe it to 
be beneficial in effect. It contributes to preserve the 
idea of a profession, of a class which belongs to the 
public, — in the employment and remuneration of 
which no law interferes, but the citizen acts as he likes 
in foro conscientice, 

There undoubtedly ought to be a declaratory act, 
withdrawing expressly from the St. John Longs and 
other quacks, the protection which the law is inclined 
to throw around the mistakes or miscarriages of the 
regularly educated practitioner. 



I think there are only two things wanting to justify 
a surgeon in performing the Csesarean operation : first, 
that he should possess infallible knowledge of his art; 
and, secondly, that he should be infallibly certain that 
he is infallible. 

Can anything be more dreadful than the thought 
that an innocent child has inherited from you a disease 



mason's poetry. 201 



or a weakness^ the penalty in yourself of sin or want 

of caution ? 

In the treatment of nervous cases^ he is the best 
physician^ who is the most ingenious inspirer of hope. 



January 3, 1833. 



T CANNOT bring myseK to think much of Mason^s 
-'- poetry. I may be wrong ; but all those passages 
in the Caractacus, which we learn to admire at school, 
now seem to me one continued falsetto. 



January 4, 1833. 

Northern and Southern States of the American Union. — All and 
the Whole. 

T^ATURALLY one would have thought that there 
-^^ would have been greater sympathy between the 
northern and north-western states of the American 
Union and England, than between England and the 
Southern states. There is ten times as much Enghsh 
blood and spirit in New England as in Yirginia, the 
Carolinas, &c. Nevertheless, such has been the force 
of the interests of commerce, that now, and for some 
years past, the people of the north hate England with 
increasing bitterness, whilst, amongst those of the 
south, who are Jacobins, the British connexion has 
become popular. Can there ever be any thorough 
national fusion of the Northern and Southern states ? 
I think not. In fact, the Union will be shaken 
almost to dislocation whenever a very serious question 
between the states arises. The American Union has 
no centre J and it is impossible ' now to make one. 



d' ^ 



V. \^^ -- ll % U- I^AU iTl\ 



202 Coleridge's table talk. 

The more they extend their borders into the Indians' 
land, the weaker will the national cohesion be. But 
I look upon the states as splendid masses to be used, 
bj and by, in the composition of two or three great 
governments. y^ 

There is a great and important difference, both in 
poKtics and metaphysics, between all and the whole. 
The first can never be ascertained as a standing quan- 
tity ; the second, if comprehended by insight into its 
parts, remains for ever known. Mr. Huskisson, 1 
thought, satisfactorily refuted the shipowners; and 
yet the shipping interest, who must know where the 
shoe pinches, complain to tliis day. 



January 7, 1833. 

Ninth Article, — Sin and Sins. — Old Divines. — Preaching extern- 

jpore. 

^^ T7EEY far gone,'' is cjiiam longissime in the Latin 
' of the ninth article, — as far gone as possible, 
that is, as was possible for man to go ; as far as was 
compatible with liis having any redeemable qualities 
left in him. To talk of man's being utterlij lost to 
good, is absurd ; for then he would be a devil at once. 



One mistake perpetually made by one of our un- 
happy parties in religion, — and with a pernicious 
tendency to Antinomianism, — is to confound sin 
with sins. To tell a modest girl, the watchful nurse 
of an aged parent, that she is full of sins against God, 
is monstrous, and as shocking to reason as it is un- 
warrantable by Scripture. But to tell her that she, 
and all men and women^ are of a sinful nature, and 



PREACHING EXTEMPOilE. 203 



that, without Christ^s redeeming love and God's 
firrace, she cannot be emancipated from its dominion, 
is true and proper.^ 



. * 



Xo article of faith can be truly and duly preaclied 
without necessarily and simultaneously infusing a 
deep sense of the indispensableness of a holy life. 

How pregnant ^ith instruction, and with knowledge 
of all sorts, are the sermons of our old divines ! in this 
respect, as in so many others, how different from the 
major part of modern discoui^ses ! 

Every attempt, in a sermon, to cause emotion, 
except as the consequence of an impression made on 
the reason, or the understanding, or the will, I hold 
to be fanatical and sectarian. 



Xo doubt preaching, in the proper sense of the 
word, is more effective than reading ; and, therefore, I 
would not prohibit it, but leave a hberty to the 
clergyman who feels himself able to accompHsh it. 
But, as things now are, I am quite sure I prefer going 
to church to a pastor who reads his discoui'se : for I 
never yet heard more than one preacher without book, 
who did not forget his argument in three minutes^ 
time ; and fall into vague and unprofitable declama- 
tion, and generally, very coarse declamation too. 
These preachers never progress ; they eddy round and 
round. Sterility of mind follows their ministry. 

* In a marginal scrap Mr. G. -^rrote : — •' Wliat are the essential doctrines 
of our religion, if not sin and original sin, as tlie necessitating occasion, 
and the redemption of sinners hy the Incarnate Word as the substance of 
the Christian dispensation? And can these be intelligently believed 
without kno-vrledge and steadfast meditation? By the unlearned they 
may be M-orthily received, but not by the unthinking and self-ignorant 
Christian." — Ed. 



204 COLERTDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

January 20, 1833. 
Church of England, 

WHEN the Church at the Eeformation ceased to 
be extra-national, it unhappily became royal 
instead; its proper bearing is intermediate between 
the crown and the people, with an inclination to the 
latter. 

The present prospects of the Church weigh heavily 
on my soul. Oh ! that the words of a statesman- 
like philosophy could win their way through the 
ignorant zealotry and sordid vulgarity of the leaders 
of the day ! 

February 5, 1833. 
Union with Ireland, 

TP any modification of the Union takes place, I 
-■- trust it will be a total divorce a vinculo matrimonii. 
I am sure we have lived a cat and dog life of it. Let 
us have no silly saving of one crown and two legisla- 
tures ; that would be preserving all the mischiefs with- 
out any of the goods, if there are any, of the union. 

I am dehberately of opinion, that England, in all 
its institutions, has received injury from its union 
with Ireland. My only difficulty is as to the Pro- 
testants, to whom we owe protection. But I cannot 
forget that the Protestants themselves have greatly 
aided in accelerating the present horrible state of 
things, by using that as a remedy and a reward which 
should have been to them an opportunity.* 

* " Whatever may be thought of the settlement that followed the battle 
of the Boyne and the extinction of the war in Ireland, yet when this had 
been made and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser policy, I doubt 
not, to have provided for the safety of the constitution by improving the 



UNION WITH lEELAND. 205 

If the Protestant Chui'cli in Ireland is removed^ of 
course the Eoniish Church must be estabhshed in its 
pLace. There can be no resisting it in common reason. 

How miserably imbecile and objectless has the 
EngKsh goverimient of Ireland been for forty years 
past ! Oh ! for a great man — but one really great 
man — who could feel the weight and the power of a 
principle^ and unflincliingly put it into act ! But truly 
there is no vision in the land^ and the people accord- 
ingly perisheth. See how triumphant in debate and 
in action O^Connell is ! Why ? Because he asserts 
a broad principle and acts up to it^ rests all his body 
on it and has faith in it. Our ministers — true Whigs 
in that — have faith in nothing but expedients de die 
in diem. Indeed^ what principles of government can 
tliey have^ who in the space of a month recanted a life 
of pohtical opinions^ and now dare to threaten tliis 

quality of the elective francMsej leaving the eligibility open, or like the 
former, limited only by considerations of property. Still, however, the 
scheme of exclusion and disqualification had its plausible side. The ink 
was scarcely dry on the parchment-rolls and proscription-lists of the popish 
parliament. The crimes of the man were generalised into attributes of 
his faith; and the Irish catholics collectively were held accomplices in 
the perfidy and baseness of the king. Alas ! his immediate adherents 
had afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish massacre was in 
the mouth of every Protestant, not as an event to be remembered, but 
as a thing of recent expectation, fear still blending with the sense of 
deliverance. At no time, therefore, could the disqualifying system have 
been enforced with so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with 
so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. There was no time 
when it was so capable of being indirectly useful as a sedative^ in order to 
the application of the remedies directly indicated, or as a cojnter-power 
reducing to inactivity whatever disturbing forces might have interfered 
with their operation. And had this use been made of these exclusive 
laws, and had they been enforced as the precursors and negative condi- 
tions, — but, above all, as hond fide accompaniments of a process of eman^ 
cipation, properly and worthily so named, the code would at this day have 
been remembered in Ireland only as when, recalling a dangerous fever of 
our boyhood, we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching-hom. and 
congratulate ourselves that our doctors now-a-days know how to manage 
these things less coarsely. But this angry code was neglected as an 
opportunity, and mistaken for a substitute: et Mnc illoe lacrymce!'' — Church 
and State, p. 195. 



206 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

and that iiiiiovatioii at the huzza of a mob^ or in pique 
at a parKamentary defeat ? 



T sometimes think it just possible that the Dissen- 
ters may once more be animated by a wiser and 
nobler spirit^ and see their dearest interest in the 
Church of England as the bulwark and glory of Pro- 
testantism^ as they did at the Eevolution. But I 
doubt their being able to resist the low factious 
malignity to the Church which has characterised them 
as a body for so many years. 



February 16, 1833. 
Faust. —Michael Scott, Goethe, Schiller, and Wordsworth. 

BEFORE I had ever seen any part of Goethe^s 
Paust^* though, of course, when I was famiKar 
enough with Marlowe^ s, I conceived and drew up the 

* "The poem Tras first published in 1790, and forms the commence- 
ment of the seventh volume of Goethe's Schriften, Wien und Leipzig, hey 
J. Stahel and G. J. Goschen, 1790. This edition is now before me. The 
poem is entitled, Faust, ein Fragment (not Doktor Faust, ein Trauerspiel, 
as Doring says), and contains no prologue or dedication of any sort. It 
commences with the scene in Faust's study, ant^, p. 17, and is continued, 
as now, down to the passage ending, ante, p. 26, line 5. In the original, 
the line — 

" Und froh ist, wenn er Regenwiirmer findet," 

ends the scene. 

The next scene is one between Faust and Mephistopheles, and begins 
thus— 

" Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugetheilt ist," 

i. e., with the passage {anth, p. 70) beginning, " I will enjoy, in my own 
heart's core, all that is parcelled out among mankind," &c. All that inter- 
venes, in later editions, is wanting. It is thenceforth continued, as now, to 
the end of the cathedral scene {ante, p. 170), except that the whole scene, in 
which Valentine is killed, is wanting. Thus Margaret's prayer to the 
Virgin and the cathedral scene come together, and form the conclusion of the 
work. According to Doring's Verzeichniss, there was no new edition of 
Faust until 1807. According to Dr. Sieglitz, the first part of Faust first 
appeared, in its present shape, in the collected edition of Goethe's works, 
which was published in 1808. — HaywarcCs Translation of Faust, second edition, 
note, p. 215. 



FAUST. 207 

plan of a work^ a drama, which was to be, to my 
mind, what the Faust was to Goethe^s. My Faust 
was old Michael Scott; a much better and more 
likely original than Faust. He appeared in the midst 
of liis college of devoted disciples, enthusiastic, ebul- 
lient, shedding around him bright surmises of dis- 
coveries fully perfected in after-times, and inculcating 
the study of nature and its secrets as the pathway to 
the acquisition of power. He did not love knowledge 
for itseK — for its own exceeding great reward — but 
in order to be powerful. This poison-speck infected 
his mind from the beginning. The priests suspect 
him, circumvent him, accuse him ; he is condemned, 
and thrown into solitary confinement : this constituted 
iheprolo(/us of the drama. A pause of four or five 
years takes place, at the end of which Michael escapes 
from prison, a soured, gloomy, miserable man. He 
will not, cannot study; of what avail had all his 
study been to him ? His knowledge, great as it was, 
had failed to preserve him from the cruel fangs of the 
persecutors ; he could not command the lightning or 
the storm to wreak their furies upon the heads of those 
whom he hated and contemned, and yet feared. Away 
with learning ! away with study ! to the winds with 
all pretences to knowledge ! We hiow nothing ; we 
are fools, wretches, mere beasts. Anon I began to 
tempt him. I made him dream, gave him wine, and 
passed the most exquisite of women before him, but 
out of his reach. Is there, then, no knowledge by 
Avhich these pleasures can be commanded ? T/iat way 
lay witchcraft, and accordingly to witchcraft Michael 
turns with all his soul. He has many failures and 
some successes ; he learns the chemistry of exciting 



308 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

drugs and exploding po\rders, and some of the pro- 
perties of transmitted and reflected light; his appe- 
tites and his curiosity are both stimulated^ and his old 
craving for power and mental domination over others 
revives. At last Michael tries to raise the Devil^ and 
the Devil comes at his call. My Devil was to be, 
like Goethe^ s, the universal humourist, who should 
make all things vain and nothing worth, by a per- 
petual collation of the great with, the little in the 
presence of the infinite. I had many a trick for him 
to play, some better, I think, than any in the Paust. 
In the mean time, Michael is miserable ; he has power, 
but no peace, and he every day more keenly feels the 
tyranny of hell surrounding him. In vain he seems 
to himself to assert the most absolute empire over the 
Devil, by imposing the most extravagant tasks ; one 
thing is as easy as another to the Devil. ^^ What 
next, Michael ?^^ is repeated every day with more 
imperious servility. Michael groans in spirit; his 
power is a curse : he commands women and wine ! 
but the women seem fictitious and devilish, and the 
wine does not make him drunk. He now begins to 
hate the Devil, and tries to cheat him. He studies 
again, and explores the darkest depths of sorcery for 
a receipt to cozen hell ; but all in vain. Sometimes 
the Devil^s finger turns over the page for him, and 
points out an experiment, and Michael hears a whisper 
— ^^ Try Uat, Michael ! ^' The horror increases ; and 
Michael feels that he is a slave and a condemned 
criminal. Lost to hope, he throws himseK into every 
sensual excess, — ^in the mid career of which he sees 
Agatha, my Margaret, and immediately endeavours to 
seduce her. Agatha loves him ; and the De^dl faci- 



FAUST. 209 

litates tlieir meetings; but she resists MicliaeFs 
attempts to ruin her^ and implores liim not to act so 
as to forfeit her esteem. Long struggles of passion 
ensue, in the result of which his affections are called 
forth against his appetites, and, love-born, the idea of 
a redemption of the lost will dawns upon his mind. 
This is instantaneously perceived by the Devil ; and 
for the first time the humourist becomes severe and 
menacing. A fearful succession of conflicts between 
Michael and the Devil takes place, in which Agatha 
helps and suffers. In the end, after subjecting him 
to every imaginable horror and agony, I made him 
triumphant, and poured peace into liis soul in the con- 
viction, of a salvation for sinners tlirough God^s grace. 
The intended theme of the Faust is the consequences 
of a misology, or hatred and depreciation of knowledge 
caused by an originally intense thirst for knowledge 
baffled. But a love of knowledge for itseK, and for 
pure ends, would never produce such a misology, but 
only a love of it for base and unworthy purposes. 
There is neither causation nor progression in the 
Faust; he is a ready-made conjuror from the very 
beginning; the incredulus ocli is felt from the first 
line. The sensuality and the tliirst after knowledge 
are unconnected mth each other. Mephistopheles 
and Margaret are excellent; but Faust himself is 
dull and meaningless. The scene in Auerbach^s 
cellars is one of the best, perhaps the very best ; that 
on the Brocken is also fine ; and all the songs are 
beautiful. But there is no whole in the poem ; the 
scenes are mere magic-lantern pictui'es, and a large 
part of the work is to me very flat. The German is 
very pure and fine. 



210 Coleridge's table talk. 

The young men in Germany and England who 
admire Lord Byron^ prefer Goethe to Schiller; but 
you may depend upon it^ Goethe does not^ nor ever 
will, command the common mind of the people of 
Germany as Schiller does. Schiller had two legitimate 
phases in his intellectual character: — the first as 
author of the Eobbers — a piece which must not be 
considered with reference to Shakspeare, but as a work 
of the mere material sublime, and in that line it is 
undoubtedly very powerful indeed. It is quite 
genuine, and deeply imbued with SchiUer's own soul. 
After this he outgrew the composition of such plays 
as the Robbers, and at once took his true and only 
rightful stand in the grand historical drama — the 
Wallenstein ; — not the intense drama of passion, — he 
was not master of that — but the diffused drama of 
history, in which alone he had ample scope for his 
varied powers. The WaUenstein is the greatest of 
his works; it is not unlike Shakspeare's historical 
plays — a species by itself. You may take up any 
scene, and it will please you by itself; just as you 
may in Don Quixote, which you read throiigli once or 
twice only, but which you read in repeatedly. After 
this point it was, that Goethe and other writers 
injured by their theories the steadiness and originahty 
of SchiUer's mind; and in every one of his works 
after the WaUenstein you may perceive the fluctuations 
of his taste and principles of composition. He got a 
notion of re-introducing the characterlessness of the 
Greek tragedy with a chorus, as in the Bride of Mes- 
sina, and he was for infusing more lyric verse into it. 
Schiller sometimes affected to despise the Eobbers 
and the other works of his first youth ; whereas he 



FAUST. 211 



ought to have spoken of them as of works not in a 
right line, but full of excellence in their way. In 
liis ballads and lighter lyrics Goethe is most excellent. 
It is impossible to praise him too higlily in this 
respect. I Kke the Wilhelm Meister the best of liis 
prose works. But neither ScliiUer^s nor Goethe^s 
prose style approaches to Lessing's, whose writings, 
for manner, are absolutely perfect. 

Although Wordsworth and Goethe are not mucli 
alike, to be sure, upon the whole ; yet they both have 
tliis peculiarity of utter non-sjonpathy with the sub- 
jects of their poetry. They are always, both of them, 
spectators ah extra, — feeling/c'r, but never loitli, their 
characters. Schiller is a thousand times more hearty 
than Goethe. 

I was once pressed — many years ago — to translate 
the Taust ; and I so far entertained the proposal as 
to read the work through with great attention, and to 
revive in my mind my own former plan of Michael 
Scott. But then I considered with myself whether 
the time taken up in executing the translation might 
not more worthily be devoted to the composition of a 
work which, even if parallel in some points to the 
Faust, should be truly original in motive and execu- 
tion, and therefore more interesting and valuable than 
any version which I could make ; and, secondly, I 
debated mth myself whether it became my moral 
character to render into English — and so far, cer- 
tainly, lend my countenance to language — much of 
which I thought vulgar, licentious, and blasphemous. 
I need not teU you that I never put pen to paper as a 
translator of Paust. 

I have read a good deal of Mr. Hayward^s version. 



312 COLERIDGE'S TABLE TALK. 

and I think it done in a very manly style ; but I do 
not admit the argument for prose translations. I 
would in general rather see verse attempted in so 
capable a language as ours. The Prench cannot help 
themselves^ of course^ with such a language as theirs. 



February 17, 1833. 
Beaumont and Fletcher. — Ben Jonson. — Massinger. 

TN the romantic drama Beaumont and Fletcher are 
-*- almost supreme. Their plays are in general most 
truly delightful. I could read the Beggar's Bush 
from morning to night. How sylvan and sunshiny it 
is ! The Little Prench Lawyer is excellent. Lawrit 
is conceived and executed from iSrst to last in genuine 
comic humour. Monsieur Thomas is also capital. I 
have no doubt whatever that the first act and the first 
scene of the second act of the Two Noble Kiusmen 
are Shakspeare^'s. Beaumont and Fletcher^s plots 
are^ to be sure_, wholly inartificial; they only care to 
pitch a character into a position to make him or her 
talk ; you must swallow all their gross improbabilities, 
and, taking it all for granted, attend only to the 
dialogue. How lamentable it is that no gentleman 
and scholar can be found to edit these beautiful plays ! * 
Did the name of criticism ever descend so low as in 
the hands of those two fools and knaves, Seward and 
Simpson ? There are whole scenes in their edition 
wliich I could with certainty put back into their 

* I believe Mr. Dyce could edit Beaumont and Fletcher as well as any 
man of the present or last generation ; but the truth is, the limited sale of the 
late editions of Ben Jonson, Shirley, &c., has damped the spirit of enterprise 
amongst the respectable publishers. Still I marvel that some cheap reprint 
of B. and F. is not undertaken. — Ed. 



BEN JONSON. MASSTNGER. 213 

original verse, and more that could be replaced in 
tlieir native prose. Was there ever such an absolute 
disregard of literary fame as that displayed by Shak- 
speare, and Beaumont and Fletcher ? * 

In Ben Jonson you have an intense and burning 
art. Some of liis plots, that of the Alchemist, for 
example, are perfect. Ben Jonson and Beaumont and 
Fletcher would, if united, have made a great dramatist 
indeed, and yet not have come near Shakspeare ; but 
no doubt Ben Jonson was the greatest man after 
Shakspeare in that age of dramatic genius. 



The styles of Massinger^s plays and the Samson 
Agonistes are the two extremes of the arc within which 
the diction of dramatic poetry may oscillate. Shak- 
speare in his great plays is the midpoint. In the 
Samson Agonistes, coUoquial language is left at the 
gTeatest distance, yet something of it is preserved, to 
render the dialogue probable : in Massinger the style 
is differenced, but differenced in the smallest degree 
possible, from animated conversation by the vein of 
poetry. 

There ^s such a divinity doth hedge our Shakspeare 
round, that we cannot even imitate his style. I tried 
to imitate his manner in the Remorse, and, when I had 

* " The men of the greatest genius, as far as we can judge from their own 
works, or from the accounts of their contemporaries, appear to have been of 
calm and tranquil temper, in all that related to themselves. In the inward 
assurance of permanent fame, they seem to have been either indifferent or 
resigned, with regard to immediate reputation." 

******* 

" Shakspeare's evenness and sweetness of temper were almost proverbial 
in his own age. That this did not arise from ignorance of his own comparative 
greatness, we have abundant proof in his sonnets, which could scarcely have 
been known to Mr. Pope, when he asserted, that our great bard 'grew 
immortal in his own despite.' " — Bioff. Lit. vol. i. p. 32. 



214 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

done^ I found I had been tracking Beaumont and 
Fletcher,, and Massinger instead. It is really very 
curious. At first sights Shakspeare and his contempo- 
rary dramatists seem to write in styles much alike : 
nothing so easy as to fall into that of Massinger and 
the others ; whilst no one has ever yet produced one 
scene conceived and expressed in the Shakspearian 
idiom. I suppose it is because Shakspeare is univer- 
sal^ and^ in fact^ has no manner ; just as you can so 
much more readily copy a picture than Nature herself. 



February 20, 1833. 
House of Commons appointing the Officers of the Army and Navy. 

T WAS just now reading Sir John Cam Hobhouse^s 
-■- answer to Mr. Hame^ I believe^ upon the point of 
transferring the patronage of the army and navy from 
the Crown to the House of Commons. I think^ if I 
had been in the House of Commons, I would have 
said, '^ that, ten or fifteen years ago, I should have 
considered Sir J. C. H.'^s speech quite unanswerable, 
— it being clear constitutional law that the House of 
Commons has not, nor ought to have, any share, 
directly or indirectly, in the appointment of the 
officers of the army or navy. But now that the Ejing 
had been reduced, by the means and procurement of 
the Honourable Baronet and his friends, to a puppet, 
which, so far from having any independent will of its 
own, could not resist a measure which it hated and 
condemned, it became a matter of grave consideration 
whether it was not necessary to vest the appointment 
of such officers in a body like the House of Conamons, 
rather than in a junta of ministers, who were obliged 



CHURCHMEN. 215 



to make common cause with the mob and democratic 
press for the sake of keeping their pLaces." 



March 9, 1833. 
Penal Code in Ireland. — Churchmen. 

nnHE penal code in Ireland^ in the beginning of the 
-^ last century^ was justifiable^ as a temporary mean 
of enabling government to take breath and look about 
them ; and if right measures had been systematically 
pursued in a right sphit^ there can be no doubt that 
all^ or the greater part, of Ireland would have become 
Protestant. Protestantism under the Charter Schools 
was greatly on the increase in the early part of that 
century^ and the complaints of the Romish priests to 
that effect are on record. But^ unfortunately the 
drenchino'-horn was itself substituted for the medicine. 



There seems to me^ at present^ to be a curse upon 
the Enghsh churchy and upon the governors of all 
institutions connected with the orderly advancement 
of national piety and knowledge; it is the cui'se of 
prudence^ as they miscall it — in fact^ of fear. 

Clerg}-men are now ahnost afraid to explain in their 
pulpits the grounds of their being Protestants. They 
are completely cowed by the vulgar harassiligs of the 
press and of our Hectoring sciohsts in Parliament. 
There should be no jjarti/ politics in the pulpit to be 
sure ; but every church in England ought to resound 
with national politics^ — I mean the sacred character 
of the national churchy and an exposure of the base 
robbery from the nation itseK — for so indeed it is* — 

* " That the maxims of a pure morality, and those sublime tmths of the 
divine unity and attributes, which a Plato foimd it hard to learn, and more 



216 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

about to be committed bv these ministers^ in order to 
have a sop to tlirow to the Irish agitators, who will, 
of coui'se, only cut the deeper, and come the oftener. 
You cannot buy off a barbarous invader. 



March 12, 1833. 
Coronation Oaths. 

T ORD GREY has, in Parhament, said two things : 
-■-^ first, that the Coronation Oaths only bind the 

difficult to reveal ; that these should have become the almost hereditary pro- 
perty of childhood and poverty, of the hovel and the workshop ; that even 
to the unlettered they sound as common-place ; this is a phenomenon which 
must withhold all but minds of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the 
services even of the pulpit and the reading-desk. Yet he who should confine 
the efficiency of an established church to these, can hardly be placed in a 
much higher rank of intellect. That to every parish throughout the king- 
dom there is transplanted a germ of civilisation; that in the remotest vil- 
lages there is a nucleus, round which the capabilities of the place may 
crystallise and brighten ; a model sufficiently superior to excite, yet suffi- 
ciently near to encourage and facilitate imitation ; tMs unobtrusive, continuous 
agency of a Protestant church establishment, tliis it is, which the patriot and 
the philanthropist, who would fain unite the love of peace with the faith in 
the progressive amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at too high a price. 
' It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the 
sapphire. No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls ; for the price of 
wisdom is above rubies.' — The clergyman is with his parishioners and among 
them ; he is neither in the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neigh- 
bour and family man, whose education and rank admit him to the mansion 
of the rich landholder, while his duties make him the frequent visitor of the 
farm-house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, connected with the 
families of his parish or its vicinity by marriage. And among the instances 
of the blindness, or at best of the short-sightedness, which it is the nature 
of cupidity to inflict, I know few more striking than the clamours of the 
farmers against church property. Whatever was not paid to the clergyman 
would inevitably at the next lease be paid to the landholder ; while, as the 
case at present stands, the revenues of the church are in some sort the 
reversionary property of every family that may have a member educated 
for the church, or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead of 
being foreclosed and immovable, it is, in fact, the only species of landed 
property that is essentially moving and circulative. That there exist no 
inconveniences who will pretend to assert ? — But I have yet to expect the 
proof, that the inconveniences are greater in this than in any other 
species ; or that either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited by 
forcing the latter to become either 21?'wZ^i&ers or salaried ^Zace/»ew." — Church 
and StatCj p. 90. 



MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 217 

King ill his executive capacity; and secondly, that 
members of the House of Commons are bound to re- 
present by their votes the wishes and opinions of their 
constituents, and not their own. Put these two toge- 
ther, and tell me what useful part of the constitutional 
monarchy of England remains. It is clear that the 
Coronation Oaths would be no better than Highgate 
oaths. For in his executive capacity the King cannot 
do an}i;hing, against the doing of which the oaths 
bind him ; it is orily in his legislative character that 
he possesses a free agency capable of being bound. 
The nation meant to bind that. 



March 14, 1833. 

Divinity. — Professions and Trades. 

"PilYDflTY is essentially the first of the professions, 
J-^ because it is necessary for all at all times ; law 
and physic are only necessary for some at some times. 
I speak of them, of course, not in thcK abstract exist- 
ence, but in their applicability to man. 



Every true science bears necessarily within itseK the 
germ of a cognate profession, and the more you can 
elevate trades into professions the better* 



March 17, 1833. 
Modern Political Economy. 

TTrilAT solemn humbug this modern political eco- 

' ^ nomy is ! What is there true of the little that is 

true in their dogmatic books, which is not a simple 

deduction from the moral and rehgious credenda and 



218 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

agenda of any good man^ and with which we were not 
all previously acquainted^ and upon which every man 
of common sense instinctively acted ? I know none. 
But what they truly state^ they do not truly under- 
stand in its ultimate grounds and causes ; and hence 
they have sometimes done more mischief by their half- 
ignorant and half-sophistical reasonings about and 
deductions from well-founded positions^ than they 
could have done by the promulgation of positive error. 
This particularly applies to their famous ratios of 
increase between man and the means of his subsist- 
ence. Pohtical economy^ at the highest^ can never 
be a pure science. You may demonstrate that certain 
properties inhere in the arch^ which yet no bridge- 
builder can ever reduce into brick and mortar ; but an 
abstract conclusion in a matter of pohtical economy, 
the premisses of which neither exist now, nor ever 
will exist within the range of the wildest imagination, 
is not a truth, but a cliimera — a practical falsehood. 
Por there are no theorems in pohtical economy — ^but 
problems only. Certain things being actually so and so; 
the question is, how to do so and so with them. Political 
philosophy, indeed, points to ulterior ends, but even 
those ends are aU practical; and if you desert the 
conditions of reahty, or of common probabihty, you 
may show forth your eloquence or your fancy, but 
the utmost you can produce wiU be a Utopia or 
Oceana. 

You talk about making tliis article cheaper by 
reducing its price in the market from 8^. to ^d. But 
suppose, in so doing, you have rendered your coun- 
try weaker against a foreign foe ; suppose you have 
demorahsed thousands of your fellow-countrymen, and 



NATIONAL DEBT. 219 



have soAvn discontent between one class of society and 
another, your article is tolerably dear, I take it, after 
all. Is not its real price enlianced to every Christian 
and patriot a hundred-fold ? 

All is an endless fleeting abstraction ; the whole is 
a reality. 

March 31, 1833. 
National Debt. — Property Tax. — Duty of Landholders. 

WHAT evil results now to this country, taken at 
large, from the actual existence of the National 
Debt ? I never could get a plain and practical answer 
to that question. I do not advert to the past loss of 
capital, although it is hard to see how that capital 
can be said to have been unproductive, wliich pro- 
duces, in the defence of the nation itself, the conditions 
of the permanence and productivity of aU other capital. 
As to taxation to pay the interest, how can the coun- 
try suffer by a process, under which the money is never 
one minute out of the pockets of the people ? You 
may just as weU say that a man is weakened by the 
circulation of his blood. There may, certainly, be 
particular local evils and grievances resulting from the 
mode of taxation or collection ; but how can that debt 
be in any proper sense a burthen to the nation, which 
the nation owes to itself, and to no one but itseK ? It 
is a juggle to talk of the nation owing the capital or 
the interest to the stockholders ; it owes to itself only. 
Suppose the interest to be owing to the Emperor of 
Russia, and then you would feel the difference of a 
debt in the proper sense. It is reaUy and truly 
nothing .more in effect than so much money, or 



220 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

money^s worthy raised annually by the state for the 
purpose of quickening industry.-J^ 

I should like to see a well graduated property-tax^ 
accompanied by a large loan. 

One conunon objection to a property-tax is^ that it 
tends to diminish the accumulation of capital. In 
my judgment^ one of the chief sources of the bad 
economy of the country now is the enormous aggre- 
gation of capitals. 

When shall we return to a sound conception of the 
right to property — namely, as being ofiicial, implying 
and demanding the performance of commensurate 
duties ? Nothing but the most horrible perversion of 
humanity and moral justice, under the specious name 

* See the splendid essay in the Friend (vol. ii., p. 47) on the vulgar errors 
respecting taxes and taxation. 

"A great statesman, lately deceased, in one of his anti-ministerial harangues 
against some proposed impost, said, ' The nation has been already bled in 
every vein, and is faint with loss of blood.' This blood, however, was circu- 
lating in the meantime through the whole body of the state, and what was 
received into one chamber of the heart was instantly sent out again at the 
other portal. Had he wanted a metaphor to convey the possible injuries of 
taxation, he might have found one less opposite to the fact, in the known 
disease of aneurism, or relaxation of the coats of particular vessels, by a dis- 
proportionate accumulation of blood in them, which sometimes occurs when 
the circulation has been suddenly and violently changed, and causes help- 
lessness, or even mortal stagnation, though the total quantity of blood remains 
the same in the system at large. 

" But a fuller and fairer symbol of taxation, both in its possible good and 
evil effects, is to be found in the evaporation of waters from the surface of the 
earth. The sun may draw up the moisture from the river, the morass, and 
the ocean, to be given back in genial showers to the garden, to the pasture, 
and the corn-field ; but it may, likewise, force away the moisture from the 
fields of tillage, to drop it on the stagnant pool, the saturated swamp, or the 
unprofitable sand-waste. The gardens in the south of Europe supply, 
perhaps, a not less apt illustration of a system of finance judiciously con- 
ducted, where the tanks or reservoirs would represent the capital of a nation, 
and the hundred rills, hourly varying their channels and directions under 
the gardener's spade, give a pleasing image of the dispersion of that capital 
through the whole population by the joint effect of taxation and trade. For 
taxation itself is a part of commerce, and the government may be fairly con- 
sidered as a great manufacturing house, carrying on, in different places, by 
means of its partners and overseers, the trades of the shipbuilder, the 
clothier, the iron-founder," &c., &c. — Ed. 



MASSINGER. 221 



of political economy, could have blinded men to this 
truth as to the possession of hind, — the law of God 
having connected indissolubly the cultivation of every 
rood of earth with the maintenance and watchful 
labour of man. But money, stock, riches by credit, 
transferable and convertible at will, are under no such 
obhgationsj and, unhappily, it is from the selfish 
autocratic possession of such property, that our land- 
holders have learnt their present theory of trading 
with that which was never meant to be an object of 
commerce. 

April 5, 1833. 
Massinger. — Sh akspeare. — Hieronim o. 

T^O please me, a poem must be either music or 
J- sense; if it is neither, I confess I cannot interest 
myself in it. 

The first act of the Virgin Martyr is as fine an act 
as I remember in any play. The Very Woman is, I 
think, one of the most perfect plays we have. There 
is some good fun in the first scene between Don John, 
or Antonio, and Cuculo, his master ; ^ and can any- 
thing exceed the skill and sweetness of the scene 
between him and his mistress, in which he relates 
his story ? f The Bondman is also a dehghtful play. 

* Act iii. sc. 2. 
t Act iv. sc. 3 : — 

" Ant. Not far from where my father lives, a lady 
A neighbour by, ble.ss'd with as great a beauty 
As nature durst bestow without undoing, 
Dwelt, and most happily, as I thought then, 
And bless'd the home a thousand times she dwelt in. 
This beauty, in the blossom of my youth, 
^'hen my first fire knew no adulterate incense, 
Nor I no way to flatter, but my fondness ; 
In all the bravery my friends could show me, 



222 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Massinger is always entertaining ; his plays have the 
interest of novels. 

But^ like most of liis contemporaries^ except Shak- 
speare^ Massinger often deals iii exaggerated passion. 
Malefort senior, in the Unnatural Combat^ however 

In all tlie faith my innocence could give me, 
In the best langnage my time tongue could tell me, 
And all the broken sighs my sick heart lent me, 
I sued and served : long did I love this lady, 
Long was my travail, long my trade to win her ; 
With all the duty of my soul, I served her. 

Alm. How feelingly he speaks ! (Aside.) And she loved you too? 
It must be so. 

A^TT. I would it had, dear lady : 

This story had been needless, and this place, 
I think, unknown to me. 
Alm. Were your bloods equal ? 
Ant. Yes : and I thought our hearts too. 
ALii. Then she must love. 

Ant. She did — but never me ; she could not love me, 
She would not love, she hated; more, she scom'd me, 
And in so poor and base a way abused me, 
For all my services, for all my bounties, 

So bold neglects flung on me 

Al5I. An ill woman ! 

Belike you found some rival in your love, then? 

AxT. How perfectly she points me to my story ! [Astde.) 
Madam, I did ; and one whose pride and anger, 
111 manners, and worse mien, she doted on, 
Doted to my undoing, and my ruin. 
And but for honour to your sacred beauty. 
And reverence to the noble sex, though she fall. 
As she must fall that durst be so unnoble, 
I should say something unbeseeming me. 
Wliat out of love, and worthy love, I gave her, 
Shame to her most imworthy mind ! to fools, 
To girls, and tiddlers, to her boys she flung, 
And in disdain of me. 

ALii. Pray you take me with you. 

Of what complexion was she ? 

AxT. But that I dare not 

Commit so great a sacrilege 'gainst virtue, 
She look'd not much unlike — though far, far short, 
Something, I see, appears — your pardon, madam — 
Her eyes would smile so, but her eyes could cozen 
And so she would look sad ; but yours is pity, 
A noble chorus to my wretched story : 
Hers was disdain and cruelty. 

Alm. Pray heaven. 

Mine be no worse I he has told me a strange story. {Aside.)'" &c. — Ed. 



HIERONIMO. 223 



lie may have had the moral will to be so wicked^ could 
never have actually done all that he is represented as 
guilty of, without losing his senses. He would have 
been^ in fact^ mad. Eegan and Goneril are the only 
pictures of the unnatural in Shakspeare — the pm^e 
unnatural ; and you will observe that Shakspeare has 
left their hideousness unsoftened or diversified by a 
single line of goodness or common human frailty. 
Whereas^ in Edmund^ for whom passion^ the sense of 
shame as a bastard, and ambition, offer some plausible 
excuses, Shakspeare has placed many redeeming traits. 
Edmund is what, under certain circumstances^ any 
man of powerful intellect might be, if some other 
qualities and feelings were cut off. Hamlet is, inclu- 
sively, an Edmund, but different from him as a whole^ 
on account of the controlling agency of other prin- 
ciples which Edmund had not. 

It is woith wliile to remark the use which Shak- 
speare always makes of his bold \dllains as vehicles 
for expressing opinions and conjectures of a nature 
too hazardous for a wise man to put forth directly as 
his own, or from any sustained character. 

The parts pointed out in Hieronimo as Ben Jonson''s 
bear no traces of his style; but they are very like 
Shakspeare^s ; and it is very remarkable that every 
one of them re-appears in full form and development, 
and tempered with mature judgment, in some one or 
other of Shakspeare^s great pieces.* 

* By Hieronimo Mr. Coleridge meant The Spanish Tragedy, and not the 
previous play, which is usually called The First Part of Jeronimo. The 
Spanish Tragedy is, upon the authority of Heywood, attributed to Kyd. It 
is supposed that Ben Jonson originally performed the part of Hieronimo, 
and hence it has been surmised that certain passages and whole scenes 
connected with that character, and not found in some of the editions of the 



224 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

April 7, 1833. 

Lov^s Labour Lost. — GifforcVs Massinger. — ShaJcspeare. — The old 

Dramatists, 

I THINK I could point out to a half line what is 
really Shakspeare^s in Lovers Labour Lost^ and 
some other of the not entirely genuine plays. What 

play, are, in fact, Ben Jonson's ovm writing. Some of these supposed 
interpolations are amongst tlie best things in the Spanish Tragedy; the 
style is singularly unlike Jonson's, whilst there are turns and particular 
images which do certainly seem to have been imitated by or from Shak- 
speare. Mr. Lamb at one time gave them to Webster. Take this passage, 
in the fourth act : — 

** HiEEOX. What make you with your torches in the dark ? 

Pedeo. You bid us light them, and attend you here. 

HiERON. No ! you are deceived ; not I ; you are deceived. 
Was I so mad to bid light torches now ? 
Light me your torches at the mid of noon. 
When as the sun- god rides in all his glory ; 
Light me your torches then. 

Pedeo. Then we bum day-light. 

HiEEON. Let it be burnt ; night is a murderous slutf 
That would not have her treasons to be seen; 
And yonder pale-faced Hecate there, the mooUj 
Doth give co'nsent to that is done in darkness ; 
And all those stars that gaze upan her face 
Are aglets on her sleeve, pins on her train ; 
And those that should be poioerful and divine, 
Do sleep in darkness when they most should shine. 

Pedeo. Provoke them not, fair sir, with tempting words. 
The heavens are gracious, and your miseiies and sorrow 
Make you speak you know not what. 

HiEEOX. Villain ! thou liest, and thou dost nought 
But tell me I am mad: thou liest, I am not mad; 
I know thee to be Pedro, and he Jaques ; 
Til prove it thee; and were I mad, how could I? 
Where was she the same night, when my Horatio was murdered/ 
She should have shone then : search thou the book : 
Had the moon shone in my boy's face, there was a kind of grace, 
That I know — nay, I do knoxo, had the murderer seen him, 
His weapon would have fallen, and cut the earth. 
Had he been framed of nought but blood and death^'' &c. 

Again, in the fifth act : — 

" HiEEON. But are you sure that they are dead ? 
Castjle. Ay, slain, too sure. 
HiEEON. What, and yours too ? 
Viceroy. Ay, all are dead : not one of them survive 



225 

lie wrote in that play is of his earliest manner^ having 
the all-pervading sweetness which he never lost^ and 
that extreme condensation wliich makes the conplets 
fall into epigrams^ as in the Yenus and Adonis^ and 
Eape of Lncrece.* In the drama alone^ as Shakspeare 
soon fonnd out^ could the subhme poet and profound 
pliilosopher find the conditions of a compromise. 
In the Lovers Labour Lost there are many faint 
sketches of some of liis vigorous portraits in after- 

HiERON. Nay. then I care not — come, vre shall he friends ; 
Let us lay our heads together. 
See, here 's a goodly noose ^vill hold them all. 

Viceroy. damn'd devil ! ho-^^ secure he is ! 

HiEEON. Secure ! why dost thou wonder at it ? 
I tell thee, Viceroy, this day Vve seen Revenge, 
And in that sight am grown a prouder mono.rch 
Than ever sate under the crovjn of Spain. 
Had I as many lives as there be stars, 
As many heavens to go to as those lives, 
I'd give them all, ay, and my soul to boot, 
But Ivjoidd see thee ride in this red pool. 
Methinks, since I grew inward with revenge, 
I coMTtot looTc with scorn enough on death. 

KixG. WTiat! dost thou mock us, slave? Bring tortures forth. 

HiERON. Do, do, do; and meantime IHl torture you. 
You had a son as I take it, and your son 

Should have been married to your daughter : ha I was it not sof 
You had a son too, he was my liege s nephew. 
He was proud and politic — had he lived. 
He might have come to wear the crown of Spain : 
I think H was so — H was I that kilVd him ; 
Look you — this same hand was it that stabVd 
His heart — do you see this hand'i 
For one Horatio, if you ever knew him — 
A youth, one that they hanged up in his faXher'' s garden — 
One that did force your valiant son to yield,^' &c. — Ed. 

* " In Shakspeare's Poems the creative power and the intellectual energy 
wrestle as in a war embrace. Each in its excess of strength seems to 
threaten the extinction of the other. At length, in the drama, they were 
reconciled, and fought each with its shield before the breast of the other. 
Or like two rapid streams, that, at their first meeting within narrow and 
rocky banks, mutually strive to repel each other, and intermix reluctantly, 
and in tumult; but soon finding a wider channel and more yielding shores, 
blend and dilate, and flow on in one cuiTent, and with one voice." — Biog. Lit. 
vol. ii. p. 21. 



226 COLEEIDGE S TABLE TALK. 

life — as for example^ in particular^ of Benedict and 
Beatrice.* 

Gifford lias done a great deal for the text of Mas- 
singer^ but not as much as might easily be done. 
His comparison of Shakspeare with his contemporary 
dramatists is obtuse indeed.f 

In Shakspeare one sentence begets the next natur- 
ally; the meaning is all inwoven. He goes on 
kindling like a meteor through the dark atmosphere ; 
yet, when the creation in its outhne is once perfect, 
then he seems to rest from his labour, and to smile 
upon his work, and tell himseK that it is very good. 
You see many scenes and parts of scenes which are 
simply Shakspeare^ s, disporting himself in joyous 
triumph and vigorous fun after a great achievement 
of his highest genius. 

The old dramatists took great liberties in respect of 
bringing parties in scene together, and representing 
one as not recognising the other under some faint 
disguise. Some of their finest scenes are constructed 
on this ground. Shakspeare avails himself of this 
artifice only twice, I think, — in TweKth Night, where 
the two are with great skill kept apart till the end of 
the play ; and in the Comedy of Errors, which is a 
pure farce, and should be so considered. The defini- 
tion of a farce is, an improbability or even impos- 
sibility granted in the outset; see what odd and 
laughable events will fairly follow from it ! 

* Mr. Coleridge, of course, alluded to Biron and Eosaline ; and there are 
other obvious prolusions, as the scene of the masque with the courtiers, 
compared with the play in A Midsummer Night's Dream. — Ed. 

t See his Introduction to Massinger, vol. i. p. 79, in which, amongst other 
most sxtraordinary assertions, Mr. Giflord pronounces that rhythmical modu- 
lation is not one of ShaTcspeare' s merits ! — Ed. 



STATESMKN. — BUUKE. 227 

April 8, 1833. 
Statesmen. — BurJce. 

INEYER was much subject to violent political 
humoui's or accesses of feelings. When I was 
very youngs I wrote and spoke very enthusiastically ; 
but it was always on subjects connected with some 
grand general principle^ the violation of which I 
thought I could point out. As to mere details of 
administration^ I honestly thought that ministers, 
and men in office^, must, of course, know much better 
than any private person could possibly do; and it 
was not till I went to Malta, and had to correspond 
^vith official characters myself, that I fully understood 
the extreme shallowness and ignorance with which 
men of some note too were able, after a certain 
fashion, to carry on the government of important 
departments of the empire. I then quite assented 
to Oxenstiern's saying, JSfesciSj mi fill, q^iam parva 
sapie7itia regitur mimchcs, 

Burke was, indeed, a great man. No one ever 
read liistory so philosophically as he seems to have 
done. Yet, until he could associate liis general 
principles with some sordid interest, panic of property. 
Jacobinism, &c., he was a mere dinner bell. Hence 
you will find so many half truths in his speeches and 
writings. JNTevertheless, let us heartily acknowledge 
his transcendant greatness. He would have been 
more influential if he had less surpassed his contem- 
poraries, as Eox and Pitt, men of much inferior minds 
in all respects. 

As a telegraph supposes a correspondent telescope, 
so a scientific lecture requires a scientific audience. 

q2 



228 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 

April 9, 1833. 

Prospect of Monarchy or Democracy. — The reformed House of 

Commons. 

T HAYE a deep^ though paradoxical^ conviction 
-L that most of the European nations are more or 
less on their way, unconsciously indeed, to pure 
monarchy ; that is, to a government in which, under 
circumstances of complicated and subtle control, the 
reason of the people shall become efficient in the 
apparent will of the king.* As it seems to me, the 
wise and good in every country will, in all likeliliood, 
become every day more and more disgusted with 
the representative form of government, brutalised as 
it is, and will be, by the predominance of demo- 
cracy in England, Erance, and Belgium. The states- 
men of antiquity, we know, doubted the possibility 
of the effective and permanent combination of the 
three elementary forms of government ; and, perhaps, 
they had more reason than we have been accustomed 

to think. 

You see how this House of Commons has begun to 
verify all the iU prophecies that were made of it — low, 
vulgar, meddling with everything, assuming universal 
competency, flattering every base passion, and sneering 
at everything noble, refined, and truly national ! The 
direct and personal despotism will come on by and by, 
after the multitude shall have been gratified with the 
ruin and the spoil of the old institutions of the land. 
As for the House of Lords, what is the use of ever so 
much fiery spirit, if there be no principle to guide and 
to sanctify it ? 

* This is backing Vico against Spinosa. It must, however, be acknow- 
ledged that at present the prophet of democracy has a good right to be 
considered the favourite. — Ed. 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 229 



April 10, 1833. 

United States of America. — Captain B. Hall. — Northern and 
Southern States. — Democracy with Slavery. — Quakers, 

THE possible destiny of the United States of 
America^ — as a nation of a hundred millions of 
freemen_, — stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific^ 
li^dng under the laws of Alfred^ and speaking the 
language of Shakspeare and Milton^ is an august 
conception, ^^w should we not wish to see it 
reahsed? America would then be England viewed 
through a solar microscope ; Great Britain in a state 
of glorious magnification ! How deeply to be lamented 
is the spirit of hostihty and sneering which some of 
the popular books of travels have shown in treating 
of the Americans ! They hate us^ no doubt^ just as 
brothers hate; but they respect the opinion of an 
EngHshman concerning themselves ten times as much 
as that of a native of any other country on earth. A 
very little humouring of their prejudices^ and some 
courtesy of language and demeanour on the part of 
Enghshmen,, would work wonders^ even as it is^ with 
the public mind of the Americans. 

Captain Basil HaFs book is certainly very enter- 
taining and instructive; but, in my judgment, liis 
sentiments upon many points, and more especially 
his mode of expression, are unwise and uncharitable. 
After all, are not most of the tilings shown up with 
so much bitterness by him mere national foibles, 
parallels to wliich every people has and must of 
necessity have ? 

What you say about the quarrel in the United 
States is sopliistical. iSo doubt, taxation may, and 



230 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

perhaps in some cases must^ press unequally^ or appar- 
ently so^ on different classes of people in a state. In 
such cases there is a hardship ; but^ in the long ruii^ 
the matter is fully compensated to the over-taxed 
class. Por example^ take the householders of London^ 
who complain so bitterly of the house and window 
taxes. Is it not pretty clear that, whether such 
householder be a tradesman, Avho indemnifies himself 
in the price of his goods, — or a letter of lodgings, 
who does so in his rent, — or a stockholder, who 
receives it back again in his dividends, — or a country 
gentleman, who has saved so much fresh levy on his 
land or his other property, — one way or other, it 
comes at last pretty nearly to the same thing, though 
the pressure for the time may be unjust and vexatious, 
and fit to be removed ? But when New England, 
which may be considered a state in itself, taxes the 
admission of foreign manufactures in order to cherish 
manufactures of its own, and thereby forces the 
Carolinians, another state of itself, with which there 
is little intercommunion, which has no such desire 
or interest to serve, to buy worse articles at a higher 
price, it is altogether a different question, and is, in 
fact, downright tyranny of the worst, because of the 
most sordid, kind. What would you think of a law 
which should tax every person in Devonshire for the 
pecuniary benefit of every person in Yorkshire ? And 
yet that is a feeble image of the actual usurpation of 
the New England deputies over the property of the 
Southern States. 

There are two possible modes of unity in a State ; 
one by absolute co-ordination of each to all, and of 
all to each ; the other by subordination of classes and 



LAND AND MONEY. 231 

oiRces. Now^ I maintain that there never was an in- 
stance of the hrst^ nor can there be^ without slavery as 
its condition and accompaniment^ as in Athens. The 
poor Swiss cantons are no exception. 

The mistake lies in confounding a state which must 
be based on classes and interests and unequal pro- 
perty^ with a churchy which is founded on the person^ 
and has no qualification but personal merit. Such a 
community may exist_, as in the case of the Quakers ; 
but^ in order to exists it must be compressed and 
hedged in by another society — mundus mmidulus in 
mundo immundo, 

The free class in a slave state is always^ in one 
sense^ the most patriotic class of people in an empire ; 
for their patriotism is not simply the patriotism of 
other people^ but an aggregate of lust of power and 
distinction and supremacy. 



April 11, 1833. 

Land and Money, 

T AND was the only species of property which^ in 
■*-^ the old time^ carried any respectability with it. 
Money alone^ apart from some tenure of land^ not 
only did not make the possessor great and respectable^ 
but actually made lum at once the object of plunder 
and hatred. Witness the history of the Jews in this 
country in the early reigns after the Conquest. 



I have no objection to your aspiring to the political 
principles of our old Cavaliers ; but embrace them aU 
fuUy^ and not merely tliis and that feelings whilst in 
other points you speak the canting foppery of the 
Benthamite or Malthusian schools. 



232 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

April 14, 1833. 
Methods of Investigation. 

nPHERE are three ways of treating a subject : — 
-*- In the first mode^ yon begin with a definition, 
and that definition is necessarily assumed as the 
truth. As the argument proceeds,, the conclusion 
from the first proposition becomes the base of the 
second^ and so on. Now, it is quite impossible that 
you can be sure that you have included all the neces- 
sary, and none but the necessary, terms in your defi- 
nition ; as, therefore, you proceed, the original speck 
of error is multiphed at every remove; the same 
infirmity of knowledge besetting each successive defi- 
nition. Hence you may set out, like Spinosa, with all 
but the truth, and end with a conclusion which is 
altogether monstrous; and yet the mere deduction 
shall be irrefragable. Warburton^s "Divine Lega- 
tions^ is also a splendid instance of this mode of 
discussion, and of its inability to lead to the truth : in 
fact, it is an attempt to adopt the mathematical series 
of proof, in forgetfulness that the mathematician is 
sure of the truth of his definition at each remove, 
because he creates it, as he can do, in pure figure and 
number. But you cannot maJc^ anything true which 
results from, or is connected with, real externals ; you 
can oiAj find it out. The chief use of this first mode 
of discussion is to sharpen the wit, for which purpose 
it is the best exercitation. 

2. The historical mode is a very common one : in 
it the author professes to find out the truth by col- 
lecting the facts of the case, and tracing them 
downwards; but this mode is worse than the other. 



METHODS OF INVESTIGATION. 233 

Suppose the question is as to the true essence and 
character of the English constitution. Pirst^ where 
will you begin your collection of facts ? where will 
you end it ? AVhat facts will you select ? and how do 
you know that the class of facts which you select^ are 
necessary terms in the premisses^ and that other classes 
of facts, which you neglect, are not necessary ? And 
how do you distinguish phenomena wliich proceed 
from disease or accident, from those which are the 
genuine fruits of the essence of the constitution? 
What can be more striking, in illustration of the 
utter inadequacy of this line of investigation for 
arriving at the real truth, than the political treatises 
and constitutional histories which we have in every 
library ? A Whig proves his case convincingly to the 
reader who knows nothing beyond his author ; then 
comes an old Tory (Carte, for instance), and ferrets 
up a hamperful of conflicting documents and notices, 
which proves his case per contra. A. takes this class 
of facts; B. takes that class: each proves something 
true, neither proves the truth, or an}i:hing like the 
truth ; that is, the whole truth. 

3. You must, therefore, commence mth the philo- 
sophic idea of the thing, the true nature of which you 
wish to find out and manifest. You must carry your 
rule ready made, if you wish to measui'e aright. If 
you ask me how I can know that this idea — my own 
invention — is the truth, by which the phenomena of 
history are to be explained, I answer, in the same way 
exactly that you know that your eyes were made to see 
with j and that is, because you do see with them. If 
I propose to you an idea or self-realizing theory of the 
constitution, which shaU manifest itself as in existence 



234 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

from the earliest times to the present^ — which shall 
comprehend within it all the facts which history has 
preserved^ and shall give them a meaning as inter- 
changeably cansals or effects; — if I show you that 
such an event or reign was an obhquity to the right 
hand^ and how produced^ and such other event or reign 
a deviation to the left_, and whence originating^ — ^that 
the growth was stopped here^ accelerated there^ — that 
such a tendency is^ and always has been^ corroborative^ 
and such other tendency destructive^ of the main pro- 
gress of the idea towards realization ; — ^if this idea^ 
not only like a kaleidoscope^ shall reduce all the mis- 
cellaneous fragments into order^ but shall also minis- 
ter strength^ and knowledge^ and light to the true 
patriot and statesmen for working out the bright 
thought^ and bringing the glorious embryo to a per- 
fect birth ; — then^ I think, I have a right to say that 
the idea which led to this is not only true, but the 
truth, the only truth. To set up for a statesman upon 
liistorical knowledge only, is as about as wise as to 
set up for a musician by the purchase of some score 
flutes, fiddles, and horns. In order to make music, 
you must know how to play ; in order to make your 
facts speak truth, you must know what the truth is 
which ought to be proved, — the ideal truth, — the 
truth which was consciously or unconsciously, strongly 
or weakly, T\dsely or blindly, intended at all times.* 

* I have preserved this passage, conscious, the while, how liable it is to be 
misunderstood, or at least not understood. The readers of Mr, Coleridge's 
works generally, or of his " Church and State " in particular, will have no 
difficulty in entering into his meaning ; namely, that no investigation in the 
non-mathematical sciences can be carried on in a way deserving to be called 
philosophical, unless the investigator have in himself a mental initiative, or, 
what comes to the same thing, unless he set out with an intuition of the ulti- 
mate aim or idea of the science or aggregation of facts to be explained or 
interpreted. The analysis of the Platonic and Baconian methods in " The 



CHURCH OF ROME. 235 

April 18, 1833. 
Cfiurch of Rome. — Celibacy of the Clergy. 

TN my judgment^ Protestants lose a great deal of 
-*- time iu a false attack ^vJieu they labour to convict 
the Eomanists of false doctrines. Destroy the Pajoacj, 
and help the priests to Tvives^ and I am much mis- 
taken if the doctrinal errors^ such as there really are^ 
^'ould not very soon pass a^vay. They might remain 
in terminis, but they would lose their sting and body^ 
and lapse back into figui^es of rhetoric and warm de- 
votion^ from which t\\e\, most of them^ — such as 
transubstantiation^ and prayers for the dead and to 
saints^ — originally sprang. But^ so long as the Bishop 
of Rome remains Pope^ and has an army of Mamelukes 
all over the worlds we shall do very little by fulmi-. 
nating against mere doctrinal errors. In the Milanese^ 
and elsewhere in the north of Italy^ I am told there 
is a powerful feeling abroad against the Papacy. That 
district seems to be something in the state of England 
in the reim of our Henry the Eio^h. 

How deep a wound to morals and social purity has 
that accursed article of the celibacy of the clergy been ! 
Even the best and most enlightened men in Romanist 
countries attach a notion of impurity to the marriage 
of a clergyman. And can such a feeling be without 
its effect on the estimation of the wedded life in gene- 
ral ? Impossible ! and the morals of both sexes in 
Spain^ Italy,, Prance^ &c. prove it abundantly. 

The Papal church has had tliree phases^ — anti- 
Csesarean. extra-national^ anti-Christian. 

Friend," to wMch I have before referred, and the '' Cliurcli and State." 
exhibit respectively a splendid vindication and example of Mr, Coleridge'3 
mode of reasoning on this s abject. — Ed, 



236 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

April 20, 1833. 
Roman Conquest of Italy, 

T^HE Romans would never have subdued tlie Italian 
-^ tribes if tliey had not boldly left Italy and con- 
quered foreign nations^ and so^ at last^ crushed their 
next-door neighbours by external pressure. 



April 24, 1833. 

Wedded Love in SJiaJcspeare and Ms Contemporary Dramatists. — 

Tennyson^ s Poems. 

T? XCEPT in Shakspeare^ you can find no such thing 
-Li as a pure conception of wedded love^ in our old 
dramatists. In Massinger^ and Beaumont and 
Fletcher^ it really is on both sides little better than 
sheer animal desire. There is scarcely a suitor in all 
their plays^ whose ahilities are not discussed by the 
lady or her waiting-woman. In tliis^ as in all tilings^ 
how transcendant over his age and liis rivals was 
our sweet Shakspeare ! 

I have not read tlirough all Mr. Tennyson^s j)oems^ 
which have been sent to me ; but I think there are 
some things of a good deal of beauty in what I have 
seen. The misfortune is^ that he has begun to write 
verses without very weR understanding what metre is. 
Even if you write in a known and approved metre^ 
the odds are^ if you are not a metrist yourself^ that 
you will not write harmonious verses ; but to deal in 
new metres without considering what metre means 
and requires^ is preposterous. What I would^ with 
many wishes for success^ prescribe to Tennyson, — 
indeed without it he can never be a poet in act, — is 



TxABELAIS AND LUTHErv. 237 

to write for the next two or three years in none but 
one or two well known and strictly defined metres^ 
such as the heroic couplet^ the octave stanza^ or the 
octo-syllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. 
He would^ probably, thus get imbued with a sensa- 
tion, if not a sense, of metre without kno\^'ing it, just 
as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses by 
conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely 
scan some of his verses. 



May 1, 1833. 
Rabelais and Luther. — Wit and Mad/ness, 

I THINK with some interest upon the fact that 
Eabelais and Luther were born in the same year.* 
Glorious spirits ! glorious spirits ! 

^' Hos utinam inter 

Heroas natum ine ! " 



" Great wits are sure to madness near allied," 

says Dry den, and true so far as this, that genius of 
the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the 
modifying power, wliich, detached from the discrimi- 
native and reproductive power, might conjure a platted 
straw into a royal diadem : but it would be at least 
as true, that great genius is most alien from mad- 
ness, yea, divided from it by an impassable mountain, 
— namely, the activity of thought and vivacity of the 
accumulative memory, which are no less essential 
constituents of '^ great wit.''^ 

* They ^rere both born -witMii tfrelve months of each other, I believe ; but 
Luther's birth was in Noyember, 1484, and that of Rabelais is generally- 
placed at the end of the year preceding.— Ed. 



238 coleeidge's table talk. 

May 4, 1833. 
Colonization. — Machinery. — Capital. 

/COLONIZATION is not only a manifest expedient 
^ for^ but an imperative duty on^ Great Britain. God 
seems to hold out liis finger to us over the sea. But 
it must be a national colonization^ such as was that 
of the Scotch to America ; a colonization of hope^ and 
not such as we have alone encouraged and effected for 
the last fifty years^ a colonization of despair. 



The wonderful powers of machinery can^ by multi- 
plied production^ render the mere arte facta of life 
actually cheaper : thus money and all other things 
being supposed the same in value^ a silk gown is five 
times cheaper now than in Queen Elizabeth^s time ; 
but machinery cannot cheapen^ in anything like an 
equal degree^ the immediate growths of nature or the 
immediate necessaries of man. Now^ the arte facta 
are sought by the higher classes of society in a pro- 
portion incalculably beyond that in which they are 
sought by the lower classes; and therefore it is 
that the vast increase of mechanical powers has not 
cheapened life and pleasure to the poor as it has done 
to the rich. In some respects^ no doubt^ it has done 
so^ as in giving cotton dresses to maid-servants^ and 
penny gin to all. A pretty benefit truly ! 



I think this country is now suffering grievously 
under an excessive accum^ulation of capital^ which_, 
having no field for profitable operation, is in a state 
of fierce civil war with itseK. 



PAPACY AND THE SCHOOLMEN. 239 



May 6, 1833. 
Eoman Conquest. — Constant irie. — Papacy and the Schoolmen. 

^T^HE Eomans had no national clerisy; their priest- 
-L hood was entirely a matter of state^ and^ as far 
back as we can trace it^ an evident stronghold of the 
Patricians against the increasing powers of the Ple- 
beians. All we know of the early Eomans is^ that^ 
after an indefinite lapse of years^ they had conquered 
some fifty or sixty miles round then- city. Then it is 
that they go to war with Carthage^ the great maritime 
power^ and the result of that war was the occupation 
of Sicily. Thence tliey^ in succession^ conquered 
Spain^ Macedonia^ Asia Minor^ &c.^ and so at last 
contrived to subjugate Italy^ partly by a tremendous 
back blow^ and partly by bribing the Italian States 
with a communication of their privileges^ which the 
now enormously enriched conquerors possessed over 
so large a portion of the civilized world. They were 
ordained by Providence to conquer and amalgamate 
the materials of Christendom. They were not a 
national people ; they were truly — 
Romanos rerum dominos — 
— and that 's all. 

Under Constantino the spiritual power became a 
complete reflex of the temporal. There were four 
patriarchs^ and four prefects^ and so on. The Clergy 
and the Lawyers^ the Church and the State^ were 
opposed. 

The beneficial influence of the Papacy upon the 
whole has been much over-rated by some ^Titers ; and 
certainly no country in Eorope received less benefit 



240 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

and more harm from it than England. In fact^ the 
lawful kings and parliaments of England were always 
essentially Protestant in feeling for a national ehnrch^ 
though they adhered to the received doctrines of the 
Christianity of the day ; and it was only the usurpers^ 
John^ Henry lY.^ &c._, that went against this poUcy. 
All the great English schoolmen^ Scotus Erigena^* 
Duns Scotus, Ockham, and others^ those morning 
stars of the Reformation, were heart and soul opposed 
to Rome, and maintained the Papacy to be Antichrist. 
The Popes always persecuted, with rancorous hatred, 
the national clerisies, the married clergy, and disliked 
the universities which grew out of the old monasteries. 
The Papacy was, and is, essentially extra-national, and 
was always so considered in this country, although 
not behoved to be anti-Christian. 



May 8, 1833. 

Civil War of the Seventeenth Century. — Hampden's Speech. 

T KNOW no portion of history which a man might 
^ write with so much pleasure as that of the great 
struggle in the time of Charles I., because he may 
feel the profoundest respect for both parties. The 
side taken by any particular person was determined 
by the point of view which such person happened to 
command at the commencement of the inevitable 
collision, one line seeming straight to this man, another 

* John Scotus, or Erigena, was bom, according to different authors, in 
Wales, Scotland, or Ireland ; but I do not find any account making him an 
Englishman of Saxon blood. His death is uncertainly placed in the beginning 
of the ninth century. He lived in well-known intimacy with Charles the 
Bald, of France, who died about a.d. 874. He resolutely resisted the doctrine 
of transubstantiation, and was publicly accused of heresy on that account. 
But the king of France protected him.— Ed. 



REPORMED HOUSE OF COMMONS. 241 

line to another. No man of that age saw tlie truth, 
the whole truth ; there was not light enough for that. 
The consequence, of course, was a violent exaggeration 
of each party for the time. The King became a martyr, 
and the Parliamentarians traitors, and vice versa. The 
great reform brought into act by and under William 
the Third combined the principles truly contended for 
by Charles and his Parliament respectively : the great 
revolution of 1831 has certainly, to an almost ruinous 
degree, dislocated those principles of government 
again. As to Hampden^s speech,* no doubt it means 
a declaration of passive obedience to the sovereign, as 
the creed of an English Protestant individual : every 
man, Cromwell and all, would have said as much ; it 
was the antipapistical tenet, and ahnost vauntingly 
asserted on all occasions by Protestants up to that 
time. But it imphes nothing of Hampden^s creed as 
to the duty of Parhament. 



May 10, 1833. 

Reformed House of Commons. 

TT7ELL, I tliink no honest man will deny that the 

' ^ prophetic denunciations of those who seriously 

and solemnly opposed the Eeform BiU are in a fair 

* On his impeachment with the other four members, 1642. See the " Letter 
to John Murray, Esq., touching Lord Nugent," 1833. It is extraordinary 
that Lord N. should not see the plain distinction taken by Hampden, between 
not obeying an unlawful command, and rebelling against the king because 
of it. He approves the one, and condemns the other. His words are, '' to 
yield obedience to the commands of a king, if against the true religion, against 
the ancient and fundamental laws of the land, is another sign of an ill 
subject:" — "To resist the lawful power of the king; to raise insurrection 
against the king ; admit him adverse in his religion ; to conspire against his 
sacred person, or any ways to rebel, though comraanding things against our con- 
sciences in exercising religion, or against the rights and privileges of the subject, 
is an absolute sign of the disaffected and traitorous subject." — Ed, 

R 



343 COLERlDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

way of exact fulfilment ! For myself, I own I did 
not expect such rapidity of movement. I supposed 
that the first parliament would contain a large number 
of low factious men^ who would vulgarize and degrade 
the debates of the House of Commons^ and consider- 
ably impede public business^ and that the majority 
would be gentlemen more fond of their property than 
their politics. But really the truth is something more 
than this. Think of upwards of 160 members voting 
away two millions and a half of tax on Friday,* at the 
bidding of whom, shall I say ? and then no less than 
70 of those very members rescinding their votes on 
the Tuesday next following, notliing whatever having 
intervened to justify the change, except that they had 
found out that at least seven or eight millions more 
must go also upon the same principle, and that the 
revenue was cut in two ! Of course I approve the 
vote of rescission, however dangerous a precedent; 
but what a picture of the composition of this House 
of Commons ! 



May 13, 1833. 
Food. — Medicine. — Poison,— Obstruction. 
T^HAT wliich is digested wholly, and part of which is 
-■- assimilated, and part rejected, is — Food. 

3. That which is digested wholly, and the whole 
of which is partly assimilated, and partly not, is — 
Medicine. 

3. That which is digested, but not assimilated, is 
— Poison. 

* On Friday, the 26th of April, 1833, Sir William Ingilby moved and 
carried a resolution for reducing the duty on malt from 28s. Sd. to 10s. per 
quarter. One hundred and sixty -two members voted with him. On Tuesday 
following, the 30th of April, seventy-six members only voted against the 
rescission of the same resolution. — Ed. 



WILSON. 243 



4. That which is neither digested nor assimilated 
is — Mere Obstruction. 

As to the stories of slow poisons^ I cannot say 
whether there was any^ or what^ truth in them ; but 
I certainly believe a man may be poisoned by arsenic 
a year after he has taken it. In fact^ I think that is 
known to have happened. 



May 14, 1833. 
Wilson, — ShaJcspeare's Sonnets. — Love, 

pROFESSOR WILSON^S character of Charles 
-■- Lamb in the last Blackwood^ Twaddle on Tweed- 
side,^ is very sweet indeed^ and gratified me much. It 
does honour to Wilson^ to liis head and his heart. 



How can I wish that Wilson should cease to write 
what so often soothes and suspends my bodily miseries^ 
and my mental conflicts ! Yet what a waste, what a 
reckless spending, of talent, ay, and of genius, too, 
in his I know not how many years^ management 
of Blackwood ! If Wilson cares for fame, for an 
enduring place and prominence in Literature, he 

* " Charles Lamb ouglit really not to abuse Scotland in the pleasant way 
he so often does in the sylvan shades of Enfield ; for Scotland loves Charles 
Lamb ; but he is wayward and wilful in his wisdom, and conceits that many 
a Cockney is a better man even than Christopher North. But what will not 
Christopher forgive to genius and goodness ! Even Lamb, bleating libels on 
his native land. Nay, he learns lessons of humanity even from the mild 
malice of Elia, and breathes a blessing on him and his household in their 
bower of rest," 

Some of Mr. Coleridge's poems were first published with some of 
C. Lamb's at Bristol, in 1797. The remarkable words on the title-page 
have been aptly cited in the New Monthly Magazine for February, 1835, 
p. 198 : — '^Duplex nobis vinculum, et amicitice et similium junctarumque Camm- 
narum, — quod utinam neque mors solvat, neque temporis longinquitas" And 
even so it came to pass after thirty-seven years more had passed over their 
heads. — Ed. 

r2 



244 COLERIDGE^'s TABLE TALK. 

should now^ I tliiiik^ hold liis hand, and say, as he 
well may, — 

" Militavi non sine gloma : 

Nunc arma defunctiimque hello 

Ba^-hiton hie paries hahebiV 

Two or three volumes collected out of the magazine by 
himself would be very dehghtful. But he must not 
leave it for others to do ; for some recasting and much 
condensation would be required ; and literary executors 
make sad work in general with their testators^ brains. 



I beheve it possible that a man may, under certain 
states of the moral feelins^, entertain something 
deserving the name of love towards a male object — 
an affection beyond friendship, and wholly aloof from 
appetite. In Elizabeth^s and Jameses time it seems 
to have been almost fashionable to cherish such a 
feehng ; and perhaps we may account in some measure 
for it by considering how very inferior the women of 
that age, taken generally, were in education and accom- 
phshment of mind to the men. Of course there 
were brilliant exceptions enough; but the plays of 
Beaumont and Fletcher — the most popular dramatists 
that ever wrote for the English stage — will show us 
what sort of women it was generally pleasing to 
represent. Certainly the language of the two friends, 
Musidorus and Pyrocles, in the Arcadia, is such as 
we could not now use except to women; and in 
Cervantes the same tone is sometimes adopted, as in 
the novel of the Curious Impertinent. And I think 
there is a passage in the New Atlantis -J' of Lord Bacon, 

* I cannot fix upon any passage in this work, to which it can be supposed 
that Mr. Coleridge alluded, unless it be the speech of Joabin the Jew; but it 
contains nothing coming up to the meaning in the text. The only approach 



SHAKSPEARE^S SONNETS. 245 

in which he speaks of the possibility of such a feehng, 
but hints the extreme danger of entertaining it^ or 
allowing it any place in a moral theory. I mention 
this with reference to Shakspeare^s sonnets^ which 
have been supposed^ by some^ to be addressed to 
WiUiam Herbert^ Earl of Pembroke^ whom Clarendon 
calls "^ the most beloved man of his age^ though his 
licentiousness was equal to liis virtues. I doubt this. 
I do not think that Shakspeare^ merely because he 
was an actor^ would have thought it necessary to veil 
his emotions towards Pembroke under a disguise, 
though he might probably have done so, if the real 
object had perchance been a Laura or a Leonora. It 
seems to me that the sonnets could only have come 
from a man deeply in love, and in love with a woman; 
and there is one sonnet which, from its incongruity, 
I take to be a purposed blind. These extraordinary 
sonnets form, in fact, a poem of so many stanzas of 
fourteen lines each; and, like the passion which 
inspired them, the sonnets are always the same, with 
a variety of expression, — continuous, if you regard 
the lover^s soul, — distinct, if you listen to him, as he 
heaves them sigh after sigh. 

to it seems to be : — " As for masculine love, they have no touch of it ; and 
yet there are not so faithful and in^i.olate fiiendships in the world again as 
are there ; and to speak generally, as I said before, I have not read of any 
such chastity in any people as theirs." — Ed. 

* " William Earl of Pembroke was next, a man of another mould and 
making, and of another fame and reputation with all men, being the most 
universally beloved and esteemed of any man of that age." , . . . " He 
indulged to himself the pleasures of all kinds, almost in all excesses." — Hist, 
of the Rebellion, Boo^ i. He died in 1630, aged fifty years. The dedication 
by T. T. (Thomas Thorpe) is to " the only begetter of these ensuing sonnets, 
Mr. W. H.," and Malone is inclined to think that W^illiam Hughes is 
meant. As to Mr. W. H. being the 07ilf/ begetter of these sonnets, it must 
be observed, that at least the last twenty-eight are beyond dispute addressed 
to a woman. I suppose the twentieth sonnet was the particular one con- 
ceived by ^Ir. C. to be a blind ; but it seems to me that many others may be 
so construed, if we set out with a conviction that the real object of the poet 
was a woman. — Ed. 



246 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

These sonnets, like the Vemis and Adonis, and 
the Rape of Lucrece, are characterised by boundless 
fertility and laboured condensation of thought, with 
perfection of sweetness in rh}i^hm and metre. These 
are the essentials in the budding of a great poet. 
Afterwards habit and consciousness of power teach 
more ease — -prcBcipitandum liherum spiritum. 



Every one who has been in love, knows that the 
passion is strongest, and the appetite weakest, in the 
absence of the beloved object, and that the reverse is 
the case in her presence. 



May 15, 1833. 



Wicliffe* — Luther. — Reverence for Ideal Truths. — Johnson the 
Whig. — Asgill. — James /. 

WICLIFFE^S genius was, perhaps, not equal to 
Luther^s ; but really the more I know of him 
from Yaughan and Le Bas, both of whose books I 
like, I think him as extraordinary a man as Luther 
upon the whole. He was much sounder and more 
truly catholic in his view of the Eucharist than Luther. 
And I find, not without some pleasure, that my own 
^dew of it, wliich I was afraid was original, was main- 
tained in the tenth century, that is to say, that the 
body broken had no reference to the human body of 
Christ, but to the Cara Noumenon, or symbolical 
Body, the Rock that followed the Israelites. 

AVhitaker beautifully says of Luther : — Felix ille, 
quern JDominus eo honor e dignatus est^ ut homines ne- 
quissimos suos haheret inimicos. 



There is now no reverence for anything; and the 



JOHNSON THE WHIG. 247 

reason is^ that men possess conceptions only, and all 
their knowledge is conceptional only. Now as, to 
conceive, is a work of the mere understanding, and as 
all that can be couceived may be comprehended, it is 
impossible that a man should reverence that, to which 
he must always feel sometliing in himseK superior. 
If it were possible to conceive God in a strict sense, 
that is, as we conceive a horse or a tree, even God 
liimself could not excite any reverence, though he 
might excite fear or terror, or perhaps love, as a tiger 
or a beautiful woman. But reverence, which is the 
spithesis of love and fear, is only due from man, and, 
indeed, only excitable in man, towards ideal truths, 
which are always mysteries to the understanding, for 
the same reason that the motion of my finger behind 
my back is a mystery to you now — your eyes not 
being made for seeing through my body. It is the 
reason only which has a sense by which ideas can be 
recognised, and from the fontal light of ideas only 
can a man draw intellectual power. 



Samuel Johnson,* whom, to distinguish him from 
the Doctor, we ^ may call the Whig, was a very 
remarkable writer. He may be compared to his 
contemporary De Foe, whom he resembled in many 
points. He is another instance of King "WiUiam^s 
discrimination, which was so much superior to that of 

* Dryden's Ben Jochanan, in tlie second part of Absalom and AcMtophel. 
He was bom in 1649, and died in 1703. He was a clergyman. In 1686, when 
the army was encamped on Hounslow Heath, he published " A humble and 
hearty Address to all English Protestants in the present Army." For this 
he was tried and sentenced to be pilloried in three places, pay a fine, and be 
whipped from Newgate to Tyburn. An attempt was also made to degrade 
him from his orders, but this failed through an informality. After the 
Revolution he was preferred. — Ed, 



248 

any of liis ministers. Jolinson was one of the most 
formidable advocates for the Exclusion Bill^ and he 
suffered by wliipping and imprisonment under James 
accordingly. Like Asgill^ he argues with great appa- 
rent candour and clearness till he has his opponent 
witliin reach^ and then comes a blow as from a sledge- 
haromer. I do not know where I could put my hand 
upon a book containing so much sense and somid 
constitutional doctrine as this thin folio of Johnson^s 
TVorks; and what party in this country would read 
so severe a lecture in it as our modern Whigs ! 

A close reasoner and a good writer in general may 
be known by his pertinent use of connectives. Read 
that page of Johnson ; you cannot alter one conjunc- 
tion without spoihng the sense. It is a Hnked strain 
throughout. In your modern books^ for the most 
part^ the sentences in a page have the same connection 
with each other that marbles have in a bag; they 
touch without adhering. 

Asgill evidently formed his style upon Johnson^ s^ 
but he only imitates one part of it. Asgill never 
rises to Johnson^s eloquence. The latter was a sort 
of Cobbett-Burke. 

James the First thought that^ because aU power in 
the state seemed to "pmceei //'o?/i the crown^ aU power 
therefore remained i/i the crown ; — as if^ because the 
tree sprang from the seed,, the stem, branches, leaves, 
and fruit were aU contained in the seed. The consti- 
tutional doctrine as to the relation which the king 
bears to the other components of the state is in two 
words tliis : — He is a representative of the whole of 
that, of which he is liimself a part. 



GERMAN. — GOETHE. 219 



May 17, 1833. 
Sir P. Sidney. — Things are finding their Level. 

WHEN Sir Philip Sidney saw the enthusiasm 
which agitated every man^ woman^ and cliild in 
the K'etherlands against Philip and DMlva^ he tokl 
Queen Elizabeth that it was the spirit of God^ and 
that it was imancible. T\'hat is the spirit which 
seems to move and unsettle every other man in Eng- 
land and on the Continent at this time ? Upon my 
conscience, and judging by St. Jolin^s rule, I tliink 
it is a special spirit of the de^-il — and a very vulgar 
devil too ! 

Your modern pohtical economists say that it is a 
principle in their science — that all things Jitid their 
level; — which I deny; and say, on the contrary, that 
the true principle is, that all tilings are finding their 
level Hke water in a storm. 



May 18, 1833. 

Gernw.n. — Goethe, — God's Providence. — Man's Freedom. 

r^ ERMAX is inferior to Enghsh in modifications 

^ of expression of the affections, but superior to it in 

modifications of expression of all objects of the senses. 



Goethe^s smaE. lyiics are dehghtful. He showed 
good taste in not attempting to imitate Shakspeare^s 
Witches, which are threefold, — Eates, Euries, and 
earthlv Hasrs o^ the caldron. 



Man does not move in cycle?, though nature does. 
Man^s couj'se is hke that of an arrow ; for the portion 



250 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of the great cometary ellipse which he occupies is no 
more than a needless length to a mile. 



In natural history^ God^s freedom is shown in the 
law of necessity. In moral history^ God^s necessity 
or providence is shown in man^s freedom. 



June 8, 1833. 

Dom Miguel and Dom Pedro. — Working to letter One'^s Condition. 

— Negro Emancipation, — Fox and Pitt. — Revolution, 

^HERE can be no doubt of the gross violations of 
-*- strict neutrality by this government in the Por- 
tuguese affair; but I wish the Tories had left the 
matter alone^ and not given room to the people to 
associate them with that scoundrel Dom Miguel. You 
can never interest the common herd in the abstract 
question ; with them it is a mere quarrel between the 
men ; and though Pedro is a very doubtfid character, 
he is not so bad as his brother ; and, besides, we are 
naturally interested for the girl. 



It is very strange that men who make light of the 
direct doctrines of the Scriptures, and turn up their 
noses at the recommendation of a line of conduct sug- 
gested by religious truth, wiU nevertheless stake the 
tranquillity of an empire, the lives and properties of 
millions of men and women, on the faith of a maxim 
of modern political economy! And this, too, of a 
maxim true only, if at all, of England or a part of 
England, or some other country ; — namely, that the 
desire of bettering their condition will induce men 
to labour even more abundantly and profitably than 



FOX AND PITT. 251 



servile compulsion, — to which maxiin the past history 
and present state of all Asia and Africa give the lie. 
Nay, even in England at tliis day, every man in Man- 
chester, Birmingham, and in other great manufac- 
turing towns, knows that the most skiKul artisans, 
who may earn liigh wages at pleasure, are constantly 
in the habit of working but a few days in the week, 
and of idling the rest . I believe St. Monday is very 
well kept by the workmen in London. The love of 
indolence is universal, or next to it. 

Must not the ministerial plan for the West Indies 
lead necessarily to a change of property, either by force 
or dereliction ? I can^t see any way of escaping it. 

You are always talking of the rights of the negroes. 
As a rhetorical mode of stimulating the people of 
England here, I do not object ; but I utterly condemn 
your frantic practice of declaiming about their rights 
to the blacks themselves. They ought to be forcibly 
reminded of the state in which their brethren in Africa 
still are, and taught to be thankful for the providence 
which has placed them within reach of the means of 
grace. I know no right except such as flows from 
righteousness; and as every Christian believes his 
righteousness to be imputed, so must his right be an 
imputed right too. It must flow out of a duty, and 
it is under that name that the process of humanization 
ought to begin and to be conducted tliroughout. 

Thirty years ago, and more, Pitt availed himself, 
with great political dexterity, of the apprehension, 
which Burke and the conduct of some of the clubs in 
London had excited, and endeavoured to inspire into 



252 

the nation a panic of property. Pox^ instead of 
exposing the absurdity of this by showing the real 
numbers and contemptible weakness of the disaf- 
fected^ fell into Pittas trap^ and was mad enough to 
exaggerate even Pittas surmises. The consequence 
was^ a very general apprehension tlu'oughout Jie coun- 
try of an impending revolution^ at a time when^ I will 
venture to say, the people were more heart-whole than 
they had been for a hundred years previously. After 
I had travelled in Sicily and Italy, countries where 
there were real grounds for fear, I became deeply 
impressed with the difference. 'Now, after a long 
continuance of high national glory and influence, 
when a revolution of a most searching and general 
character is actually at work, and the old institutions 
of the country are all awaiting their certain destruc- 
tion or violent modification — the people at large are 
perfectly secure, sleeping or gambolling on the very 
brink of a volcano. 



June 15, 1833. 

Virtue and Liberty. — Epistle to the Romans. — Erasmus. — Luther. 

T^HE necessity for external government to man is in 
-L an inverse ratio to the vigour of his self-govern- 
ment. Where the last is most complete, the first is least 
wanted. Hence, the more virtue the more liberty. 



1 think St. Paulas Epistle to the Romans the most 
profound work in existence ; and I hardly believe that 
the writings of the old Stoics, now lost, could have 
been deeper. Undoubtedly it is, and must be, very 
obscure to ordinary readers ; but some of the difficulty 



NEGHO EMANCIPATION. 253 

is accidental, arising from the form in ^vliicli the 
Epistle appears. If we could now arrange this work 
in the way in which we may be sure St. Paul would 
himself do, were he now alive, and preparing it for 
the press, his reasoning would stand out clearer. His 
accumulated parentheses would be thrown into notes, 
or extruded to the margin. You will smile, after this, 
if I say that I think I understand St. Paul ; and I 
think so, because, really and truly, I recognize a 
cogent consecutiveness in the argument — the only 
evidence I know that you understand any book. How 
different is the style of this intensely passionate argu- 
ment from that of the catholic circular charge called 
the Epistle to the Ephesians ! — and how different 
that of both from the style of the Epistles to Timo- 
thy and Titus, wliich I venture to call eirLaroXal 

navXoeib^'is. 

Erasmuses paraplirase of the New Testament is clear 
and explanatory; but you cannot expect anything 
very deep from Erasmus. The only fit commentator 
on Paul was Luther — not by any means such a gen- 
tleman as the Apostle, but almost as great a genius. 



June 17, 1833. 
Negro Emancipation. 

HAVE you been able to discover any principle in 
this Emancipation Bill for the Slaves, except a 
principle of fear of the abohtion party struggHng with 
a dread of causing some monstrous calamity to the 
empire at large? Well! I will not prophesy; and 
God grant that tliis tremendous and unprecedented 
act of positive enactment may not do the harm to the 



254 coLEraDGE^s table talk. 

cause of humanity and freedom which I cannot but 
fear ! But yet_, what can be hoped^ when all human 
wisdom and counsel are set at nought^ and religious 
faith — the only miraculous agent among men — is not 
invoked or regarded ! and that most unblest phrase — 
the Dissenting interest — enters into the question ! 



June 22, 1833. 

Haclcefs Life of Archbishop Williams. — Charles I. — Manners under 
Edward III., Richard II., and Henry VIII. 

WHAT a dehghtful and instructive book Bishop 
Hacked s Life of Archbishop "WiUiams is ! You 
learn more from it of that which is valuable towards 
an insight into the times preceding the Civil War than 
from aU the ponderous histories and memoirs now 
composed about that period. 



Charles seems to have been a very disagreeable per- 
sonage during Jameses Hfe. There is nothing dutiful 
in his demeanour. 

I think the spirit of the court and nobility of 
Edward III. and Eichard II. was less gross than 
that in the time of Henry YIII. ; for in this latter 
period the chivalry had evaporated^ and the whole 
coarseness was left by itself. Chaucer represents a 
very high and romantic style of society amongst the 
gentry. 



HYPOTHESIS. — SUFFICTIOy. — ^THEORY. 255 

June 29, 1833. 
Hypothesis. — Siufflctioii. — Theory. — LyelVs Geology. — Goth Ic A rchl 
tecture. — Gerard Douw's ^^ Schoolmaster^^ and Titian^ s " Venus. 
— Sir J. Scarlett. 

IT seems to me a great delusion to call or suppose 
the imagiuation of a subtle fluids or molecules 
penetrable witli the same^ a legitimate hj'pothesis. It 
is a mere suffictioii, Newton took the fact of bodies 
falling to the centre^ and upon that built up a legiti- 
mate hypothesis. It was a subposition of something 
certain. But Descartes'' vortices were not an hypo- 
thesis ; they rested on no fact at all ; and yet they 
did^ in a clumsy way^ explain the motions of the 
heavenly bodies. But your subtle fluid is pure 
gratuitous assumption; and for what use ? It explains 
nothing. 

Besides^ you are endeavouring to deduce power 
from mass^ in which you expressly say there is no 
power but the vis inertice ; whereas^ the whole analog)^ 
of chemistry proves that power produces mass. 

The nse of a theory in the real sciences is to help 
the investigator to a complete view of all the hitherto 
discovered facts relating to the science in question ; 
it is a collected view^ Oecopta, of all he yet knows in one. 
Of course, whilst any pertinent facts remain unknown^ 
no theory can be exactly true, because every new fact 
must necessarily, to a greater or less degree, displace 
the relation of aU the others. A theory, therefore, 
only helps investigation ; it cannot invent or discover. 
The only true theories are those of geometry, because 
in geometry aU the premisses are true and unalterable. 
But, to suppose that, in our present exceedingly im- 



256 COLEllIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

perfect acquaintance with the facts^ any theory in che- 
mistry or geology is altogether accurate, is absurd : — 
it cannot be true. 

Mr. Lyeirs system of geology is just half the truth, 
and no more. He affirms a great deal that is true, 
and he denies a great deal which is equally true; 
which is the general characteristic of all systems not 
embracing the whole truth. So it is with the recti- 
linearity or undulatory motion of light; — I believe 
both ; though pliilosophy has as yet but imperfectly 
ascertained the conditions of their alternate existence, 
or the laws by which they are regulated. 

Those who deny light to be matter do not, there- 
fore, deny its corporeity. 

The principle of the Gothic architecture is infinity 
made imaginable. It is, no doubt, a sublimer effort of 
genius than the Greek style ; but then it depends much 
more on execution for its effect. I was more than ever 
impressed with the marvellous sublimity and transcend- 
ant beauty of King^s College Chapel.^ It is quite 
unparalleled. 

* Mr. Coleridge visited Cambridge upon the occasion of the scientific 
meeting there in June, 1833. — " My emotions," he said, " at revisiting the 
university were at first overwhelming. I could not speak for an hour ; yet 
my feelings were upon the whole very pleasurable, and I have not passed, 
of late years, at least, three days of such great enjoyment and healthful 
excitement of mind and body. The bed on which I slept — and slept soundly 
too — was, as near as I can describe it, a couple of sacks full of potatoes tied 
together. I understand the young men think it hardens them. Tnily I lay 
down at night a man, and arose in the morning a bruise." He told me " that 
the men were much amused at his saying that the fine old Quaker philoso- 
pher Dalton's face was like All Souls' College." The two persons of whom 
he spoke with the greatest interest were Mr. Faraday and Mr. Thirlwall; 
saying of the former, " that he seemed to have the tnie temperament of 
genius, that carrying-on of the spring and freshness of youthful, nay, 
boyish feelings, into the matured strength of manhood! " For, as Mr. Cole- 
ridge had long before expressed the same thought, — " To find no contradio- 



SIR JAMES SCARLETT. COBBETT. 257 

I think Gerard Douw's '^ Schoolmaster/'' in the 
Fitzwilliam Mnsenm^ the finest thing of the sort I 
ever saw; — whether you look at it at the common 
distance, or examine it vnih. a glass, the wonder is 
equal. And that glorious pictui-e of the Yenus — so 
perfectly beautiful and perfectly innocent — ■ as if 
beauty and innocence could not be dissociated ! The 
Trench thino: below is a curious instance of the in- 
herent grossness of the French taste. Titian^s picture 
is made quite bestial. 

I think Sir James Scarlett^s speech for the defendant, 
in the late action of Cobbett v. The Times, for a libel, 
worthy of the best ages of Greece or Eome ; though, 
to be sure, some of liis remarks could not have been 
very palatable to his clients. 

I am glad you came in to punctuate my discourse, 
which I fear has gone on for an hour without any 
stop at all. 

tion in tlie union of old and neTr; to contemplate the Ancient of Days and all 
His works with fe£lings as fresh as if all had then sprung forth at the first 
creative fiat, this characterises the mind that feels the riddle of the world. 
and may help to unravel it. To carry on the feelings of childhood into the 
powers of manhood: to combine the child's sense of wonder and novelty with 
the appearances which every day for perhaps forty years had rendered 
familiar — 

* AYith sun and moon and stars throughout the year. 
And man and woman ; ' 
this is the character and privilege of genius, and one of the marks which 
distinguish genius from talent. And therefore is it the piime merit of 
genius, and its most unequivocal mode of manifestation, so to represent 
familiar objects as to awaken in the minds of others a kindred feeling 
concerning them, and that freshness of sensation which is the constant 
accompaniment of mental, no less than of bodily, convalescence. Who has 
not a thousand times seen snow fall on water ? Who has not watched it 
with a new feeling, from the time that he has read Bums's comparison of 
sensual pleasure- 
To snow that falls upon a river, 
A moment white — then gone for ever ! ' " 

Biog. Lit. vol. i., p. 85. — Ed. 
S 



258 Coleridge's table talk. 

July 1, 1833. 

Mandeville's Fable of the Bees. — Bestial Theory. — Character of 
Bertram. — Beaumont and Fletcher'' s Dramas. — JEschyliis, 
Sophocles, Euripides, — Milton. 

TF I could ever believe that Mandeville really meant 
-■- anything more by his Fable of the Bees than a 
bonne houche of solemn raillery^ I should like to ask 
those man-shaped apes who have taken up his sug- 
gestions in earnest^ and seriously maintained them as 
bases for a rational account of man and the world — 
how they explain the very existence of those dexterous 
cheats^ those superior charlatans^ the legislators and 
philosophers^ w^ho have known how to play so well 
upon the peacock-like vanity and foUies of their fellow- 
mortals. 

By the by^ I wonder some of you lawyers [sub 
rosa, of course) have not quoted the pithy lines in 
Mandeville upon this registration question : — 

" The lawyers, of whose art the basis 
Was raising feuds and splitting cases, 
Opposed all Registers, that cheats 
Might make more work with dipt estates ; 
As 't were unlawful that one's own 
Without a lawsuit should be known ! 
They put off hearings wilfully, 
To finger the refreshing fee ; 
And to defend a wicked cause 
Examined and survey'd the laws, 
As burglars shops and houses do. 
To see where best they may break through." 

There is great Hudibrastic vigour in these lines ; 
and those on the doctors are also very terse. 

Look at that head of Cline^ by Chantrey ! Is that 
forehead^ that nose, those temples and that chin, akin 



BERTRAM AND HELENA. 259 

to the monkey tribe ? Xo, no. To a man of sensibility 
no argmnent could disprove the bestial theory so con- 
vincingly as a quiet contemplation of that fine bust. 



I cannot agree with the solemn abuse which the 
critics have poured out upon Bertram in^ ^^ All ^s TTell 
that ends TTell.^^ He was a young nobleman in feudal 
times^ just bursting into manhood^ with all the feel- 
ings of pride of biith and appetite for pleasure and 
liberty natui'al to such a character so cuTumstanced. 
Of course^ he had never regarded Helena otherwise 
than as a dependant in the family; and of all that 
wliicii she possessed of goodness and fidelity and 
courage^ which might atone for her inferiority in other 
respects^ Bertram was necessaiily in a great measure 
ignorant. And after all^ her j^rimd facie merit was 
the having inherited a prescription from her old father 
the doctor^ by which she cui'es the king^ — a merit 
which, supposes an extravagance of personal loyalty in 
Bertram to make conclusive to liim in such a matter 
as that of taking a wife. Bertram had surely good 
reason to look upon the king's forcing him to marry 
Helena as a very tyraimical act. Indeed^ it must be 
confessed that her character is not very delicate^ and 
it required all Shakspeare^s consummate skill to in- 
terest us for her; and he does this cliiefly by the 
operation of the other characters^ — the Countess^ 
Lafeu^ &c. TTe get to hke Helena from their praising 
and commendins: her so much. 



In Beaumont and Iletcheris tragedies the comic 
scenes are rarely so interfused amidst the tragic as to 
produce a unity of the tragic on the wliole^ without 



260 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

which the intermixture is a fault. In Shakspeare, this 
is always managed with transcendant skill. The Pool 
in Lear contributes in a very sensible manner to the 
tragic ATildness of the whole drama. Beaumont and 
rietcher^'s serious plays or tragedies are complete 
hybrids^ — neither fish nor fleshy — upon any rules, 
Greek, Eoman, or Gotliic; and yet they are very 
dehghtful notwithstanding. Xo doubt, they imitate 
the ease of gentlemanly conversation better than Shak- 
speare, who was unable not to be too much associated 
to succeed perfectly in this. 

When I was a boy, I was fondest of ^schylus ; in 
youth and middle age, I preferred Euripides ; now in 
my decHning years, I admire Sophocles. I can now at 
length see that Sophocles is the most perfect. Yet he 
never rises to the sublime simphcity of jEschylus — 
simphcity of design, I mean — nor diffuses himself in 
the passionate outpourings of Euripides. I understand 
why the ancients called Euripides the most tragic of 
their dramatists : he evidently embraces within the 
scope of the tragic poet many passions, — love, con- 
jugal affection, jealousy, and so on, wliich Sophocles 
seems to have considered as incongruous with the 
ideal statuesqueness of the tragic di'ama. Certainly 
Euripides was a greater poet in the abstract than 
Sophocles. His choruses may be faulty as choruses, 
but how beautiful and affecting they are as odes and 
songs ! I think the famous Ei/tTTTrou, ^ere, in the 
(Edipus Coloneus,* cold in comparison with many of 
the odes of Euripides, as that song of the chorus in 

'ixcu TO, TcooiTicrcc yoig irrccvXct, 

T09 oc^yTtTcc ^oXoovdy ' — K. T. >:, V. 668 



CHORIC ODE IN THE HECUBA. 261 

the Hippolytus — ^'Epcos, "'Epcoy^* and so on; and I 
remember a choric ode in the Hecuba,, which always 
struck me as exquisitely rich and finished; I mean^ 
where the chorus speaks of Troy and the night of the 
capture.! 

* "E^4;5,"E|4'?, xocT oju,u,a,rck)v 

a-TOiiu; ToOovj u<Ta.yc>)\ 'yXvfcilotv 

f/.vi f/,01 Torl (Tiiv xocxaj (potvUr,?, 

fjCYtV cipp'j6u,o; 'i'Adots ' — z. t. k. V. 527. 

\ I take it for granted that Mr. Coleridge alluded to the chorus, — 

ovxiri A=|=/ • roLov 'EX- 

do^i Si5, do^i ciiPffotV — X. r. A. V. 899. 

Thou, then, O natal Troy ! no more 
The city of the unsack'd shalt be, 
So thick from dark Achaia's shore 
The cloud of war hath cover'd thee. 

Ah ! not again 

I tread thy plain — 
The spear — the spear hath rent thy pride ; 
The flame hath scarr'd thee deep and wide ; 
Thy coronal of towers is shorn. 
And thou most piteous art — most naked and forlorn 

I perish'd at the noon of night ! 
When sleep had seal'd each weary eye ; 
WTien the dance was o'er, 
And harps no more 
Rang out in choral minstrelsy. 
In the dear bower of delight 
My husband slept in joy ; 
His shield and spear 
Suspended near. 
Secure he slept : that sailor band 
Full sure he deem'd no more should stand 
Beneath the walls of Troy. 
And I too, by the taper's light. 
Which in the golden mirror's haze 
Flash'd its interminable rays, 
Bound up the tresses of my hair. 
That I Love's peaceful sleep might share. 

I slept ; but, hark ! that war-shout dread, 
Which rolling through the city spread ; 
And this the cry, — " When, Sons of Greece, 
When shall tlie lingering leaguer cease ? 



262 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

There is nothing very surprising in Milton^s pre- 
ference of Euripides^ though so unlike himself. It 
is very common — very natural — for men to lilie and 
even admire an exhibition of power very different in 
kind from anything of their own. No jealousy arises. 
Milton preferred O^dd too^ and I dare say he admired 
both as a man of sensibility admires a lovely woman, 
with a feeUng into which jealousy or envy cannot 
enter. With ^schylus or Sophocles he might per- 
chance have matched himself. 

In Euripides you have oftentimes a very near ap- 
proach to comedy, and I hardly know any writer in 
whom you can find such fine models of serious and 
dignified conversation. 

When ynSS. ye spoil Troy's watch-tower high, 
And home return ? '' — I heard the cry, 
And, starting from the genial bed, 
Veil'd, as a Doric maid, I fled, 
And knelt, Diana, at thy holy fane, 
A trembling suppliant — all in vain. 
They led me to the sounding shore — 

Heavens ! as I pass'd the crowded way, 

My bleeding lord before me lay — 
I saw — I saw — and wept no more, 
Till, as the homeward breezes bore 
The bark returning o'er the sea. 
My gaze, O Ilion, turn'd on thee ! 
Then, frantic, to the midnight air, 
I cursed aloud the adulterous pair : — 
" They plunge me deep in exile's woe ; 
They lay my country low : 

Their love — no love ! but some dark spell, 

In vengeance breathed, by spirit fell. 
Else, hoary sea, in awful tide. 
And whelm that vessel's guilty pride ; 
Nor e'er, in high Mycene's hall. 
Let Helen boast in peace of mighty Hion's fall." 

The translation was given to me by Mr. Justice Coleridge. — Ed. 



STYLE. CAVALIER SLANG. 2G3 

July 3, 1833. 

Style. — Cavalier Slang. — Junius. — Prose and Verse. — Imitation 
and CopTj. 

THE collocation of words is so artificial in Shak- 
speare and ]\Iilton^ that you may as well think of 
pushing a brick out of a wall ^ith your fore-finger^ as 
atterapt to remove a word out of any of their finished 
passages.* 

A good lecture upon style might be composed^ by 
takings on the one hand^ the slang of L''Estrange^ and 
perhaps even of Eoger North, f which became so 
fasliionable after the Restoration as a mark of loyalty; 
and^ on the other^ the Johnsonian magniloquence or 
the balanced metre of Junius ; and then showing how 
each extreme is faulty^ upon different grounds. 

It is quite curious to remark the prevalence of the 
Cavalier slang style in the divines of Charles the 
Second^s time. Barrow could not^ of course^ adopt 
such a mode of writing throughout^ because he could 
not in it have communicated his elaborate thinkings 
and lofty rhetoric; but even Barrow not unfrequently 

* " The amotion or transposition -^rill alter the thought, or the feeling, or 
at least the tone. They are as pieces of mosaic -n'ork, from which you cannot 
strike the smallest block -without making a hole in the picture." — Quarterly 
Review, No. GUI. p. 7. 

t But Mr. Coleridge took a great distinction between North and the other 
writers commonly associated with him. In speaking of the Examen and the 
Life of Lord North, in the Friend, Mr. C. calls them "two of the most 
interesting biographical works in our language, both for the weight of the 
matter, and the incuriosa felicitas of the style. The pages are all alive with 
the genuine idioms of our mother tongue. A fastidious taste, it is true, will 
find offence in the occasional vulgarisms, or what we now call slang ^ which 
not a few of our writers, shortly after the Restoration of Charles the Second, 
seem to have affected as a mark of loyalty. These instances, however, are 
but a trifling drawback. They are not sought for, as is too often and too 
plainly done by L' Estrange, Colly er, Tom Brown, and their imitators. North 
never goes out of his way, either to seek them, or to avoid them ; and, in the 
main, his language gives us the very nerve, pulse, and sinew of a hearty, 
healthy, conversational EjiglisJi.'' — Vol. ii. p. 307. — Ed. 



264< COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

lets slip a phrase here and there^ in the regular Eoger 
North way, — much to the delight, no doubt, of the 
largest part of his audience and contemporary readers. 
See particularly, for instances of this, his work on the 
Pope^s supremacy. South is full of it. 

The style of Junius is a sort of metre, the law of 
which is a balance of thesis and antithesis. "When he 
gets out of this aphorismic metre into a sentence of 
five or six hues long, nothing can exceed the sloven- 
liness of the English. Home Tooke and a long sen- 
tence seem the only two antagonists that were too 
much for him. Still the antithesis of Junius is a real 
antithesis of images or thought ; but the antithesis of 
Johnson is rarely more than verbal. 

The definition of good prose is — proper words in 
their proper places ; — of good verse — the most pro- 
per words in their proper places. The propriety is 
in either case relative. The words in prose ought to 
express the intended meaning, and no more ; if they 
attract attention to themselves, it is, in general, a fault. 
In the very best styles, as Southe/s, you read page 
after page, understanding the author perfectly, without 
once taking notice of the medium of communication ; 
— ^it is as if he had been speaking to you all the while. 
But in verse you must do more ; — there the words, 
the wiMia, must be beautiful, and ought to attract 
your notice — yet not so much and so perpetually as 
to destroy the unity which ought to result from the 
whole poem. This is the general rule, but, of course, 
subject to some modifications, according to the dif- 
ferent kinds of prose or verse. Some prose may 
approach towards verse, as oratory, and therefore a 
more studied exhibition of the media may be proper ; 



DR. JOHNSON. 265 



and some verse may border more on mere narrative, 
and there the style should be simpler. But the great 
thing in poetry is, quociinqite viodo, to effect a unity of 
impression upon the whole ; and a too great fulness 
and profusion of point in the parts will prevent this. 
Who can read with pleasure more than a hundi'ed lines 
or so of Hudibras at one time ? Each couplet or 
quatrain is so whole in itself, that you can^t connect 
them. There is no fusion, — just as it is in Seneca. 



Imitation is the mesothesis of likeness and difference. 
The difference is as essential to it as the likeness ; for 
without the difference, it would be copy or fac-simile. 
But to borrow a term fi'om astronomy, it is a hbrating 
mesothesis : for it may verge more to likeness as in 
painting, or more to difference, as in sculpture. 



July 4, 1833. 
Dr. Johnson. — Boswdl. — BurJce. — Newton. — Milton. 

"PkE. JOHNSOi^^s fame now rests principally upon 
-^ Boswell. It is impossible not to be amused 
with such a book. But his how-woio manner must 
have had a good deal to do with the effect produced ; 
— for no one, I suppose, wiU set Johnson before 
Burke, — and Burke was a great and universal talker ; 
— yet now we hear notliing of this except by some 
chance remarks in Boswell. The fact is, Burke, like 
all men of genius who love to talk at all, was very 
discursive and continuous ; hence he is not reported ; 
he seldom said the sharp short things that Johnson 
almost always did, wliich produce a more decided 
effect at the moment, and wliich are so much more 



266 Coleridge's table talk. 

easy to carry off.^'^ Besides^ as to Burke^s testimony 
to Johnson^s powers^ you must remember that Burke 
was a great courtier ; and after all^ Burke said and 
wrote more than once that he thought Jolinson 
greater in talking than writing, and greater in Bos- 
well than in real life.f 

Newton was a great man, but you must excuse me 
if I tliink that it would take many Newtons to make 
one Milton. 

July 6, 1833. 
Painting, — Music. — Poetry, 

T T is a poor compliment to pay to a painter to tell 
-*- him that his figure stands out of the canvas, or 
that you start at the likeness of the portrait. Take 
almost any daub, cut it out of the canvas, and place 
the figure looking into or out of a window, and any one 
may take it for life. Or take one of Mrs. Salmon^s 
wax queens or generals, and you will very sensibly 

* Burke, I am persuaded, was not so continuous a talker as Coleridge. 
Madame de Stael told a nephew of the latter, at Coppet, that Mr. C. was a 
master of monologue, mais qiCil ne savait pas le dialogue. There was a spice 
of vindictiveness in this, the exact history of which is not worth explaining. 
And if dialogue must be cut down in its meaning to small talk, I, for one, 
will admit that Coleridge, amongst his numberless qualifications, possessed 
it not. But I am sure that he could, when it suited him, converse as well as 
any one else, and with women he frequently did converse in a very winning 
and popular style, confining tliem, however, as well as he could, to the detail 
of facts or of their spontaneous emotions. In general, it was certainly 
otherwise. " You must not be surprised," he said to me, " at my talking so 
long to you — I pass so much of my time in pain and solitude, yet ever- 
lastingly thinking, that, when you or any other persons call on me, I can 
hardly help easing my mind, by pouring forth some of the accimaulated 
mass of reflection and feeling, upon an apparently interested recipient." 
But the principal reason, no doubt, was the habit of his intellect, which was 
under a law of discoursing upon all subjects with reference to ideas or ulti- 
mate ends. You might interrupt him when you pleased, and he was patient 
of everj' sort of conversation except mere personality, which he absolutely 
hated.— Ed. 

t This was said, I believe, to the late Sir James Mackintosh. — Ed. 



MUSIC. POETRY. 267 

feel the difference between a copy^ as they are^ and an 
imitation^ of the human form^ as a good portrait ought 
to be. Look at that flower vase of Van Huysum^ 
and at these wax or stone peaches and apricots ! The 
last are litest to their original^ but what pleasure do 
they give ? None^ except to children.* 

Some music is above me; most music is beneath 
me. I like Beethoven and Mozart — or else some of 
the aerial compositions of the elder Italians^ as Pales- 
trina and Carissimi.f And I love Purcell. 

The best sort of music is what it should be — 
sacred ; the next best^ the military, has fallen to the 
lot of the Devil. 

Good music never tires me, nor sends me to sleep. 
I feel physically refreshed and strengthened by it, as 
Milton says he did. 

* This passage, and those follo"svT.ng, Tnll evidence, what the readers even 
of this little work must have seen, that Mr. Coleridge had an eye, almost 
exclusively, for the ideal or universal in painting and music. He knew 
nothing of the details of handling in the one, or of rules of composition in 
the other. Yet he was, to the best of my knowledge, an unerring judge of 
the merits of any serious effort in the fine arts, and detected the leading 
thought or feeling of the artist, with a decision which used sometimes to 
astonish me. Every picture which I have looked at in company vnth him, 
seems now, to my mind, translated into English. He would sometimes say, 
after looking for a minute at a picture, generally a modern one, " There 's no 
use in stopping at this ; for I see the painter had no idea. It is mere 
mechanical drawing. Come on ; heTe the artist meant something for the 
mind." It was just the same with his knowledge of music. His appetite for 
what he thought good, was literally inexhaustible. He told me he could listen 
to fine music for twelve hours together, and go away refreshed. But he 
required in music either thought or feeling ; mere addresses to the sensual 
ear he could not away with ; hence his utter distaste for Rossini, and his 
reverence for Beethoven and Mozart. — Ed. 

t Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina was born about 1529, and died in 1594. 
I believe he may be considered the founder or reformer of the Italian church 
music. His masses, motets, and hymns are tolerably well known amongst 
lovers of the old composers ; but Mr. Coleridge used to speak with delight of 
some of Palestrina's madrigals which he heard at Rome. 

Giacomo Carissimi composed about the years 1640 — 1650. His style has 
been charged with effeminacy; but Mr. C. thought it very graceful and 
chaste. Henry Purcell needs no addition in Englajid. — Ed. 



COLEETDGE S TABLE TALK. 



I could write as good verses now as ever I did, if 
I were perfectly free from vexations, and were in the 
ad libitum hearing of fine music, which has a sensible 
effect in harmonising my thoughts, and in animating 
and, as it were, lubricating my inventive faculty. The 
reason of my not finisliing Christabel is not, that I 
don^'t know how to do it — for I have, as I always had, 
the whole plan entire from beginning to end in my 
mind ; but I fear I could not carry on with equal 
success the execution of the idea, an extremely subtle 
and difficult one.* Besides, after this continuation of 
Paust, which they tell me is very poor, who can have 
courage to attempt a reversal of the judgment of all 
criticism against continuations ? Let us except Don 
Quixote, however, although the second part of that 
transcendant work is not exactly uno flatu with the 
original conception. 



July 8, 1833. 
PvMic Schools, 

T AM clear for pubHc schools as the general rule ; 
-*- but for particular clnldren private education may 
be proper. Tor the purpose of moving at ease in the 
best Enghsh society, — mind, I don^t call the London 
exclusive chque the best Enghsh society, — the defect 
of a pubHc education upon the plan of our great 
schools and Oxford and Cambridge is hardly to be 
suppUed. But the defect is visible positively in some 
men, and only negatively in others. The first offeiid 

* " The thing attempted in Christabel is the most difficult of execution 
in the whole field of romance — witchery by daylight — and the success is 
complete." — Quarterly Review, No. GUI., p. 29. 



SCOTT AND COLEHIDGE. 269 

you by habits and modes of thinking and acting 
directly attributable to their private education : in the 
others you only regret that the freedom and facihty of 
the established and national mode of bringing up is 
not added to their good qualities. 

I more than doubt the expediency of making even 
elementary mathematics a part of the routine in the 
system of the gi'eat schools. It is enough,, I think^ 
that encouragement and facihties should be given; 
and I think more v^'ill be thus effected than by com- 
peUing all. Much less would I incorporate the 
German or French-, or any modern language^ into the 
school laboui^s. I tliink that a aTeat mistake.* 



August 4, 1833. 
Bcott and Coleridge. 

DEAR Su' "Walter Scott and myself were exacts but 
harmonious^ opposites in this ; — that every old 
ruin^ hill^ river^ or tree called up in his mind a host 
of historical or biographical associations^ — ^just as a 
bright pan of brass^ when beaten^ is said to attract 
the swarming bees; — whereas^, for myself^, notwith- 

* " One constant blunder " — I find it so pencilled by Mr. C. on a margin — 
" of these Nevr-Broomers — these Penny Magazine sages and pMlantkropists, 
in reference to our public schools, is to confine their view to what school- 
masters teach the boys, with entire oversight of all that the boys are excited 
to learn from each other and of themselves — with more geniality even 
lecause it is not a part of their compelled school knowledge. An Eton boy's 
knowledge of the St. Lawrence, Mississippi, Missouri, Orellana, &c., wiU be, 
generally, found in exact proportion to his knowledge of the Ilissus, Hebrus, 
Orontes, &c. ; inasmuch as modem travels and voyages are more entertaining 
and fascinating than Cellarius: or Robinson Crusoe, Dampier, and Captain 
Cook, than the Periegesis. Compare the lads themselves from Eton and 
Harrow, &c., with the alumni of the Xew-Broom Instinition, and not the Usts 
of school-lessons ; and be that comparison the criterion. — Ed. 



270 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

standing Dr. Johnson^ I believe I should walk over 
the plain of Marathon without taking more interest 
in it than in any other plain of similar features. Yet 
I receive as much pleasure in reading the account of 
the battle^ in Herodotus,, as any one can. Charles 
Lamb wrote an essay* on a man who lived in past 
time : — I thought of adding another to it on one who 
lived not in time at all^ past^ present^ or future^ — but 
beside or collaterally. 



August 10, 1833. 

Nervous Weakness. — Hooher and Bull, — Faith. — A Poefs need 

of Praise. 

A PERSON^ nervously weak^ has a sensation of 
-^ weakness which is as bad to him as muscular 
weakness. The only difference lies in the better 
chance of removal. 

The fact^ that Hooker and Bull^ in their two palmary 
works respectively^ are read in the Jesuit Colleges^ is 
a curious instance of the power of mind over the most 
profound of all prejudices. 

There are permitted moments of exultation through 
faith^ when we cease to feel our own emptiness save as 
a capacity for our Eedeemer^s fulness. 



There is a species of applause scarcely less genial 
to a poet^ than the vernal warmth to the feathered 
songsters during their nest-breeding or incubation; 
a sympathy^ an expressed hope^ that is the open air 

* I know not when or where ; hut are not all the writings of this exquisite 
genius the effusions of one whose spirit lived in past time ? The place which 
Lamb holds, and will continue to hold, in English literature, seems less liable 
to interruption than that of any other writer of our day. — Ed. 



QUAKERS. PHILANTHROPISTS. JEWS. 271 



iu wlucli the poet breathes, and without wliich the 
sense of power sinks back on itself, like a sigh heaved 
up from the tightened chest of a sick man. 



August 14, 1833. 
Quakers. — Philanthropists. — Jews, 

A QUAERE is made up of ice and flame. He has 
-^ no composition, no mean temperature. Hence 
he is rarely interested about any public measure but 
he becomes a fanatic, and oversteps, in his irrespective 
zeal, every decency and every right opposed to his 
coui'se. 

I have never known a trader in philanthropy who 
was not wrong in heart somewhere or other. Indi- 
\aduals so distinguished are usually unhappy in their 
family relations, — men not benevolent or beneficent to 
individuals, but almost hostile to them, yet lavishing 
money and labour and time on the race, the abstract 
notion. The cosmopolitism wliich does not spring 
out of, and blossom upon, the deep-rooted stem of 
nationahty or patriotism, is a spurious and rotten 
growth. 

Wlien I read the ninth, tenth, and eleventh chapters 
of the Epistle to the Romans to that fine old man 

Mr. , at Ramsgate, he shed tears. Any Jew of 

sensibihty must be deeply impressed by them. 



The two images farthest removed from each other 
which can be comprehended under one term, are, I 
think, Isaiah ^ — '^ Hear, heavens, and give ear, 

* I remember Mr. Coleridge used to call Isaiah his ideal of the Hebrew 
prophet. He studied that part of the Scripture with unremitting attention 



272 coleeidge's table talk. 

O earth ! ''—and Levi of Holywell Street— ^^ Old 
clothes ! '' — both of them JeAvs^ you '11 observe. 
Immane qiiantum discrepant ! 



August 15, 1833. 

SallusL — Tlmcy elides, — Herodotus. — Gibbon. — Key to the Decline 

of the Roman Empire. 

J COIN^SIDEE the two works of SaUust which have 
-^ come down to us entire^ as romances founded on 
facts ; no adequate causes are stated^ and there is no 
real continuity of action. In Thucydides^ you are 
aware from the beginning that you are reading the 
reflections of a man of great genius and experience 
upon the character and operation of the two great 
pohtical principles in conflict in the civilised world in 
his time ; his narrative of events is of minor import- 
ance,, and it is evident that he selects for the purpose 
of illustration. It is Thucydides himseK whom you 
read tlironghout under the names of Pericles^ Nicias^ &c. 
But in Herodotus it is just the reverse. He has as 
little subjectivity as Homer; and^ delighting in the 
great fancied epic of events^ he narrates them without 
impressing any thing as of his own mind upon the 
narrative. It is the charm of Herodotus that he gives 
you the spirit of his age — that of Thucydides^ that he 

and most reverential admiration. Althongli Mr. C. was remarkably deficient 
in the technical memory of words, he could say a great deal of Isaiah by heart, 
and he delighted in pointing out the hexametrical rhythm of numerous 
passages in the English version : — 

" Hear, O heavens, and give ear, 1 O earth : for the Lord hath spoken. 
I have nourished and brought up children, | and they have rebelled 

against me. 
The ox knoweth hi? owner, | and the ass his master's crib : 
But Israel doth not know, j my people doth not consider." — Ed. 



gibbon's decline and fall. 273 

reveals to you his own, which was above the spirit of 
liis age. 

The difference between the composition of a history 
in modern and ancient times is very great ; still there 
are certain principles upon wliich the history of a 
modern period may be written, neither sacrificing all 
truth and reahty, like Gibbon, nor descending into 
mere biography and anecdote. 

Gibbon's style is detestable, but his style is not the 
worst thing about him. His history has proved an 
effectual bar to all real familiarity with the temper 
and habits of imperial' Eome. Tew persons read the 
original authorities, even those which are classical; and 
certainly no distinct knowledge of the actual state of 
the empire can be obtained from Gibbon's rhetorical 
sketches. He takes notice of notliing but what may 
produce an effect ; he skips on from eminence to 
eminence, without ever taking you through the valleys 
between : in fact, his work is little else but a disguised 
collection of all the splendid anecdotes which he could 
find in any book concerning any persons or nations 
from the Antonines to the capture of Constantinople. 
When I read a chapter in Gibbon, I seem to be 
looking through a luminous haze or fog : — figures 
come and go, I know not how or why, all larger than 
hfe, or distorted or discoloured ; nothing is real, vivid, 
true; all is scenical, and as it were, exhibited by 
candlehght. And then to call it a History of the 
Dechne and Fall of the Roman Empire ! Was there 
ever a greater misnomer ? I protest I do not remem- 
ber a single pliilosophical attempt made throughout 
the work to fathom the 'iltimate causes of the decline 
or fall of that empire. How miserably deficient is 



274 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

the narrative of the important reign of Justinian ! 
And that poor scepticism, which Gibbon mistook for 
Socratic philosophy, has led him to misstate and mis- 
take the character and influence of Christianity in a 
way which even an avowed infidel or atheist would 
not and could not have done. Gibbon was a man of 
immense reading ; but he had no philosophy ; and he 
never fully understood the principle upon which the 
best of the old historians wrote. He attempted to 
imitate their artificial construction of the whole work 
— their dramatic ordonnance of the parts — ^without 
seeing that their histories were intended more as 
docum.ents illustrative of the truths of political phi- 
losophy than as mere chronicles of events. 

The true key to the declension of the Roman empire 
— ^which is not to be found in all Gibbon^s immense 
work — may be stated in two words : — the imperial 
character overlaying, and finally destroying, the na- 
tional character. Rome under Trajan was an empire 
without a nation. 



August 16, 1833. 

Dr, Johnson^ s Political Pamphlets. — Taxation, — Direct Representa- 
tion. — Universal Suffrage. — Right of Women to Vote, — Home 
TooJce. — Etymology of the final IVE. 

I LIKE Dr. Johnson^s political pamphlets better 
than any other parts of his works : — particularly 
his "Taxation no Tyranny^^ is very clever and spirited, 
though he. only sees half of liis subject, and that not 
in a very philosophical manner. Plunder — Tribute 
— ^Taxation — are the three gradations of action by the 
sovereign on the property of the subject. The first 



Drx. JOHNSON^S POLITICAL PAMPHLETS. 275 

is mere violence, bounded by no law or custom, and 
is properly an act only between conqueror and con- 
quered, and that, too, in the moment of victory. The 
second supposes law ; but law proceeding only from, 
and dictated by, one party — the conqueror; law, by 
wliich he consents to forego liis right of plunder upon 
condition of the conquered gi^^ng up to liim, of their 
own accord, a fixed commutation. The tliird implies 
compact, and negatives any right to plunder, — tax- 
ation being professedly for the direct benefit of the 
party taxed, that, by paying a part, he may through 
the labours and superintendence of the sovereign be 
able to enjoy the rest in peace. As to the right to 
tax being only commensurate with direct representa- 
tion, it is a fable, falsely and treacherously brought 
forward by those who know its hollo^Tiess well enough. 
You may show its weakness in a moment, by obser\dng 
that not even the universal suffrage of the Benthamites 
avoids the difficulty ;^for although it may be allowed 
to be contrary to decorum that women should legis- 
late ; yet there can be no reason \\'hy women should 
not choose their representatives to legislate; and if 
it be said that they are merged in their husbands, let 
it be allowed where the wife has no separate property; 
but where she has a distinct taxable estate, in wliich 
her husband has no interest, what right can her hus- 
band have to choose for her the person whose vote 
may affect her separate interest? — Besides, at all 
events, an unmarried woman of age, possessing one 
thousand pounds a year, has surely as good a moral 
right to vote, if taxation without representation is 
tyranny, as any ten-pounder in the kingdom. The 
truth, of course, is, that direct representation is a 

T 2 



276 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

chimera, impracticable in fact, and useless or noxious 
if practicable. 

Johnson had neither eye nor ear ; for nature, there- 
fore, he cared, as he knew, nothing. His knowledge 
of town life was minute ; but even that was imperfect, 
as not being contrasted with the better life of the 
country. 

Home Tooke was once holding forth on language, 
when, turning to me, he asked me if I knew what the 
meaning of the final ive was in English words. I 
said I thought I could tell what he, Home Tooke, 
himself thought. " Why, what ? " said he. " Vis;' 
I replied; and he acknowledged I had guessed right. 
I told him, however, that I could not agree with him; 
but believed that the final ive came from ich-—^icu8, 
oiKos ; the root denoting collectivity and community, 
and that it was opposed to the final ing, which sig- 
nifies separation, ])articularity, and individual property, 
from ingle, a hearth, or one man^s place or seat : ot/coy, 
vicus, denoted an aggregation of ingles. The alter- 
ation of the c and h of the root into the v was evidently 
the work of the digammate power, and hence we find 
the icus and ivus indifferently as finals in Latin. The 
precise difference of the etymologies is apparent in 
these phrases : — The lamb is sporti^*<? ; that is, has a 
nature or habit of sporting: the lamb is si^oiting ; 
that is, the animal is now performing a sport. Home 
Tooke, upon this, said nothing to my etymology; but 
I believe he found that he could not make a fool 
of me, as he did of Godwin and some other of his 
butts. 



TRANSLATION OF THE PSALMS. 277 



August 17, 1833. 

" The Loj'd*^ in the English Version of the Psalms, etc, — Scotch 
Kirk and Irving, 

IT is very extraordinary that^ in our translation of 
the Psalms, which professes to be from the Hebrew, 
the name, Jehovah — *0 ''IIN — The Being, or God — 
should be omitted, and, instead of it, the Kvpios, or 
Lord, of the Septuagint be adopted. The Alexandrian 
Jews had a superstitious dread of writing the name of 
God, and put Ysjupios not as a translation, but as a 
mere mark or sign — every one readily understanding 
for what it really stood. AVe, who have no such 
superstition, ought surely to restore the Jehovah, and 
thereby bring out in the true force the overwhelming 
testimonv of the Psalms to the divinitv of Christ, the 
Jehovah or manifested God.* 

* I find the same remark in the late most excellent Bishop Sandford's 
diary, under date 17th December, 1827 : — " X«/$£t£ '-v tm KvoIoj. ¥.vpjo; idem 
significat quod mn" apud Hebrseos. Hebraei enim nomine mrt" sanctissimo 
nempe Dei nomine, nunquam in colloquio utebantur, sed vice ejus "DIK 
pronuntiabant. quod LXX per Kv^io; exprimebant." — Eemains of Bishop 
Sandford, vol. i. p. 207. 

Mr. Coleridge saw this work for the first time many months after making 
the observation in the text. Indeed it was the very last book he ever read. 
He was deeply interested in the picture drawn of the Bishop, and said that 
the mental struggles and bodily sufferings indicated in the Diary had been 
his own for years past. He conjured me to peruse the Memoir and the 
Diary with great care : — " I have received," said he, "much spiritual comfort 
and strength from the latter. O ! were my faith and devotion, like my 
sufferings, equal to that good man's ! He felt, as I do, how deep a depth is 
prayer in faith." 

In connexion with the text, I may add here, that Mr. C. said, that long 
before he knew that the late Bishop Middleton was of the same opinion, he 
had deplored the misleading inadequacy of our authorised version of the 
expression, '^^MTOToxoi !t«o--/5j Krio-io? in the Epistle to the Colossians, i. 15 : 
o; Ittiv lixuv TcZ &ldv tov a,o$a.r6'j, ttq^utotoxo; Toccrvig XTicrict}?. He rendered the 
verse in these words : — '• Who is the manifestation of God the invisible, the 
begotten antecedently to all creation ; " observing, that in cT^airoroxo; there 
was a double superlative of priority, and that the natural meaning of "Jirst- 
born of every creature^'' — the language of our version, — afforded no premiss 
for the casual on in the next verse. The same criticism may be found in the 
Stateman's Manual, p. 56, n.; and see Bishop Sandford's judgment to the 
same effect, vol. i., p. 165. — Ed. 



278 COLERIDGE S TABLE TALK. 

I cannot understand the conduct of the Scotch 
Kirk with regard to poor Irving. They mighty with 
ample reason^ have visited him for the monstrous 
indecencies of those exhibitions of the spirit ; — per- 
haps the Kirk would not have been justified in over- 
looking such disgraceful breaches of decorum; but to 
excommunicate liim on account of his language about 
Christ^s body was very fooHsh. Irving's expressions 
upon tliis subject are ill-judged, inconvenient, in bad 
taste, and in terms false : nevertheless, his apparent 
meaning, such as it is, is orthodox. Christ^s body — 
as mere body, or rather carcass (for body is an asso- 
ciated word), was no more capable of sin or righteous- 
ness than mine or yours ; — that his humanity had a 
capacity of sin, follows from its own essence. He 
was of like passions as we, and was tempted. How 
could he be tempted, if he had no formal capacity of 
being seduced ? 

It is Irving's error to use declamation, high and 
passionate rhetoric, not introduced and pioneered by 
calm and clear logic, which is — to borrow a simile, 
though with a change in the appKcation, from the 
witty-wise, but not always wisely-witty. Fuller — hke 
knocking a nail into a board, without wimbHng a hole 
for it, and which then either does not enter, or turns 
crooked, or splits the wood it pierces. 



August 18, 1833. 
Milton'' s Egotism, — Claudian. — Sterne, 

TN the Paradise Lost — indeed in every one of his 
"*- poems — it is Milton himseK whom you see ; his 
Satan, his Adam, his Eaphael, almost his Eve — are 



CLAUDIAN. 279 



all John Milton; and it is a sense of tliis intense 
egotism that gives me the greatest pleasure in reading 
Milton^s works. The egotism of such a man is a 
revelation of spiiit. 

Claudian deserves more attention than is generally 
paid to him. He is the link between the old classic 
and the modern way of thinking in verse. You will 
observe in liim an oscillation between the objective 
poetry of the ancients and the subjective mood of the 
moderns. His power of pleasingly reproducing the 
same thought in different language is remarkable^ as 
it is in Pope. Read particularly the Phoenix, and see 
how the single image of renascence is varied.* 



I tliink highly of Sterne — that is, of the first part 

" Mr. Coleridge referred to Claudian' s first Idyll : — 
" Oceani siimmo circumfluus sequore lucus 
Trans Indos Eummque viret," &c. 
B the lines — 

*^ Hie neque concepto fetn, nee semine surgit 
Sed pater est prolesqne sibi, nulloqne creante 
Emeritos artus foecunda morte reformat, 
Et petit altemam totidem per fonera vitam. 

Et cumulum texens pretiosa fronde Sabseum 
Componit bustumque sibi partumque fiiturum. 

O senium positure rogo, falsisque sepulcris 
Natales bablture vices, qui ssepe renascl 
Exitio, proprioque soles pubescere leto. 
Accipe principium rursus. 



Parturiente rogo - 
Vieturi cineres — 



Qui fuerat genitor, natus nunc prosilit idem, 
Succeditque novus 

O fairs:, hseresque tui ! quo solvimur omnes, 

Hoc tibi suppeditat vires ; prsebetur origo 

Per cinerem ; moritur te non pereunte senectus." — Ed. 



280 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of Tristram Shandy : for as to the latter part about 
the widow Wadman, it is stupid and disgusting ; and 
the Sentimental Journey is poor sickly stuff. There 
is a great deal of affectation in Sterne^ to be sure ; 
but still the characters of Trim and the two Shandies-^ 
are most individual and delightful. Steme^s morals 
are bad^ but I don't think they can do much harm to 
any one whom they would not find bad enough before. 
Besides, the oddity and erudite grimaces under which 
much of his dirt is hidden take away the effect for 
the most part; although, to be sure, the book is 
scarcely readable by women. 



August 20, 1833. 
Humour and Genius. — Great Poets Good Men, — Diction of the 
Old and New Testament Version. — Hebrew, — Vowels and 
Consonants, 

ll/TEN of humour are always in some degree men 
^^ of genius ; wits are rarely so, although a man 
of genius may, amongst other gifts, possess wit, as 
Shakspeare. 

Genius must have talent as its complement and 
implement, just as, in like manner, imagination must 
have fancy. In short, the higher intellectual powers 
can only act through a corresponding energy of the 
lower. 

Men of genius are rarely much annoyed by the 

* Mr. Coleridge considered the character of the father, the elder Shandy, 
as by much the finer delineation of the two. I fear his low opinion of the 
Sentimental Journey will not suit a thorough Sterneist ; but I could never 
get him to modify his criticism. He said, " The oftener you read Sterne, the 
more clearly will you perceive the great difference between Tristram Shandy 
and the Sentimental Journey. There is truth and reality in the one, and 
little beyond a clever affectation in the other." — Ed. 



HEBREW. 281 



company of vulgar people, because they have a power 
of looking at such persons as objects of amusement of 
another race altogether. 

I quite agree with Strabo^ as translated by Ben 
Jonson in his splendid dedication of the Pox* — that 
there can be no great poet who is not a good man^ 
though not, perhaps, a goody man. His heart must 
be pure ; he must have learned to look into his own 
heart, and sometimes to look at it ; for how can he 
who is ignorant of his own heart know anything of, 
or be able to move, the heart of any one else ? 



I think there is a perceptible difference in the 
elegance and correctness of the Enghsh in our ver- 
sions of the Old and New Testament. I cannot 
yield to the authority of many examples of usages 
which may be alleged from the New Testament ver- 
sion. St. Paul is very often most inadequately ren- 
dered, and there are slovenly plirases which would 
never have come from Ben Jonson, or any other good 
prose writer of that day. 



Hebrew is so simple, and its words are so few and 
near the roots, that it is impossible to keep up any 
adequate knowledge of it without constant application. 
The meanings of the words are chiefly traditional. 
The loss of Origen^s Heptaglott Bible, in which he 
had written out the Hebrew words in Greek charac- 
ters, is the hea^dest which bibKcal literature has ever 

* 'H Vi [ko'-rr^ fTOiViriiJ (rvviitvy.rot,i ry, toZ avdoajTov ' xou ovy^ o76v n ocyocQot 
'yitirQu.i TOiY.rh, f^'h ^^orioov yivrM^ra, ocv'hooi a.yoe.dov. — Lib. I., p. 33. folio. 

" For, if men will impartially, and not asquint, look toward the offices and 
fiinction of a poet, they will easily conclude to themselves the impossibility 
of any man's being the good poet without first being a good man." 



282 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

experienced. It would have fixed the sounds as 
known at that time. 

Brute animals have the vowel sounds ; man only 
can utter consonants. It is natural, therefore, that 
the consonants should be marked first, as being the 
framework of the word ; and no doubt a very simple 
living language might be written quite intelligibly to 
the natives without any vowel sounds marked at aU. 
The words would be traditionally and conventionally 
recognised as in short hand — ^thus — Gd crtd tJi Hvn 
nd th RtL I wish I understood Arabic ; and yet 
I doubt whether, to the European philosopher or 
scholar, it is worth while to undergo the immense 
labour of acquiring that or any other Oriental tongue, 
except Hebrew. 



August 23, ] 833. 
Greeh Accent and Quantity. 
nnHE distinction between accent and quantity is 
-■- clear, and was, no doubt, observed by the ancients 
in the recitation of verse. But I believe such recit- 
ation to have been always an artificial thing, and that 
the common conversation was entirely regulated by 
accent. I do not think it possible to talk any lan- 
guage without confounding the quantity of syllables 
with their high or low tones;* although you may 

* This opinion, I need not say, is in direct opposition to the conclusion of 
Foster and Mitford, and scarcely reconcileable with the apparent meaning of 
the authorities from the old critics and grammarians. Foster's opponent 
was for rejecting the accents and attending only to the syllabic quantity ; — 
Mr. C. would, in prose, attend to the accents only as indicators of the 
quantity, being unable to conceive any practical distinction between time 
and tone in common speech. Yet how can we deal with the authority of 
Dionysius of Halicamassus alone, who, on the one hand, discriminates quan- 



GREEK ACCENT AND QUANTITY. 283 

sing or recitative the difference well enough. AV'hy 
should the marks of accent have been considered 
exclusively necessary for teaching the pronunciation 
to the Asiatic or African Hellenist, if the knowledge 
of the acuted syllable did not also carry the stress of 
time with it ? If avOpoDiros was to be pronounced in 
common conversation with a perceptible distinction of 
the length of the penultima as well as of the elevation 
of the antepenultima, why was not that long quantity 
also marked ? It was surely as important an ingre- 
dient in the pronunciation as the accent. And although 
the letter omega might in such a word show the quan- 
tity, yet what do you say to such words as XeXoyxacn, 
Tvyj/ao-aj and the like — the quantity of the penultima 
of which is not marked to the eye at all ? Besides, 
can we altogether disregard the practice of the modern 
Greeks ? Their confusion of accent and quantity in 
verse is of course a barbarism, though a very old one, 

tity so exquisitely as to make four degrees of shortness in the penultimates 
of 0^6;, p ohos, T^ OTOi and trr^ 6(pos, and tMs expressly Iv Xoyoi; '^i'aoIs, or plain 
prose, as well as in verse ; and on the other hand declares, according to the 
evidently correct interpretation of the passage, that the difference between 
music and ordinary speech consists in the number only, and not in the 
quality, of tones : — tm UoirS ^iuXXocttovo-oc. rrjs Iv ujhous xcci coyavois, xct) ovx) fa 
Uofcd. {Ui^} 2yv. c. 11.?) The extreme sensibility of the Athenian ear to the 
accent in prose is, indeed, proved by numerous anecdotes, one of the most 
amusing of which, though, perhaps, not the best authenticated as a fact, is 
that of Demosthenes in the Speech for the Crown, asking, " Whether, O 
Athenians, does ^schines appear to you to be the mercenary (f^terOcoTos) of 
Alexander, or his guest or friend (^ivos) ? " It is said that he pronounced 
fjLKrOaro; with a false accent on the antepenultima, as ixla-dooTo:, and that upon 
the audience immediately crying out, by way of correction, /xierdiuTos, with an 
emphasis, the orator continued coolly, — a,%ovu<; a, Xiyovcri — " You yourself 
hear what they say ! " Demosthenes is also said, whether affectedly, or in 
ignorance, to have sworn in some speech by ^Aa-zXv.Tiog, thro^ving the accent 
falsely on the antepenultima, and that, upon being interrupted for it, he 
declared, in his justification, that the pronimciation was proper, for that the 
divinity was r.-no;, mild. The expressions in Plutarch are very striking : — 
" ©o'^y^ov IxlvYtTlv^ ufjuvvi §g xcu to\ ^AtrxX'/i^iov, TT^ova^o^Cvajv * A<r;iXri'riov, kou 
frot,oi7)u%.vvl9 ai/rov o^Qcos Xiyovra.' I'vxi yko rov ^iov tjt/oj* hx) It) Tovm 
rroXXoiKis Idoev^r.O'/i.'^ Dec. Orat. — Ed. 



284 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

as the versus politici of John Tzetzes * in the twelfth 
century and the Anacreontics prefixed to Proclus will 
show ; but these very examples prove a fortiori what 
the common pronunciation in prose then was. 



August 24, 1833. 
Consolation in Distress, — Mock Evangelicals* — Autumn Day. 
T AM never very forward in offering spiritual conso- 
-L lation to any one in distress or disease. I believe 
that such resources^ to be of any service^ must be 
self-evolved in the first instance. I am something of 
the Quaker^'s mind in this^ and am inchned to wait 
for the spirit. 

The most common effect of this mock evangelical 

* See his CMliads. The sort of verses to which Mr. Coleridge alluded are 
the following, which those who consider the scansion to he accentual, take 
for tetrameter catalectic iamhics, like — 

(a»5 y^hv xa) \ volq TT^ocyfJKta-iv \ %oci ^i^ioTg \ Ofjcikuv — ) 

OTTotrov d'j I vociTO XocZiiv I ixikivi I ^^yff'/flv. 
K§9»Voy jcivh T^os yiXuroe. j3ot^i<ni xcii rvi ^ioc. 
'O 'A^TotxafMis ^octriXiu; ^^vyioi? riis /xiyaXi^^. 
'HgoSaro? tov TCy/tV ^l iroiuivoc /u,lv oh Xiyii. 

AvviQois ug Aiodcij^og y^occpu hu) Aiuv oif^oe,. — 

Chil I. 

I '11 climh the frost | y mountains high | , and there I '11 coin ! the 
weather ; 

I '11 tear the rain ] how from the sky | , and tie both ends | to- 
gether. 

Some critics, however, maintain these verses to he trochaics, although 
very loose and faulty. See Foster, p. 113. A curious instance of the early 
confusion of accent and quantity may he seen in Prudentius, who shortens 
the penultima in eremus and idcla, from 'i^y^fjcos and ti^aXoc. 
Cui jejuna eremi saxa loquacihus 
Exundant scatebris, &c. 

Cathemer. V. 89. 

cognatumque malum, pigmenta, Camoenas, 

Idola, conflavit fallendi trina potestas. 

Cont. Symm. 47. — Ed. 



FARCE AND TRAGEDY. 285 

spirit, especially with young women, is self-inflation 
and busy-bodyism. 

How stranore and awful is the synthesis of life and 
death in the gusty winds and falling leaves of an 
autumnal dav 



August 25, 1833. 

Rosetti on Dante. — Laughter : Farce and Tragedy. 

"D OSETTFs \iew of Dante^s meaning is in great 
J-*^ part just, but he has pushed it beyond all bounds 
of common sense. How could a poet — and such a 
poet as Dante — have written the details of the allegory 
as conjectured by Rosetti ? The boundaries between 
his allegory and his pure picturesque are plain enough, I 
think, at first reading. 

To resolve laughter into an expression of contempt 
is contrary to fact, and laughable enough. Laughter 
is a convulsion of the nerves ; and it seems as if nature 
cut short the rapid tkriU of pleasure on the nerves by 
a sudden convulsion of them, to prevent the sensation 
becoming painful. Aristotle^s definition is as good as 
can be : — surprise at perceiving anytliing out of its 
usual place, when the unusualness is not accompanied 
by a sense of serious danger. Such surprise is always 
pleasurable ; and it is observable that surprise accom- 
panied with circumstances of danger becomes tragic. 
Hence farce may often border on tragedy; indeed, 
farce is nearer tragedy in its essence than comedy is. 



286 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

August 28, 1833. 
Baron Von Humboldt. — Modem Diplomatists. 

"D ARO^' YON HUMBOLDT, brother of the great 
^ traveller, paid me the following compHment at 
Rome : — " I confess, Mr. Coleridge, I had my sus- 
picions that you were here in a political capacity of 
some sort or other ; but upon reflection I acquit you. 
For in Germany and, I believe, elsewhere on the 
Continent, it is generally understood that the English 
government, in order to divert the envy and jealousy 
of the world at the power, wealth, and ingenuity of 
your nation, makes a point, as a ruse de guerre, of 
sending out none but fools of gentlemanly birth and 
connexions as diplomatists to the courts abroad. An 
exception is, perhaps, sometimes made for a clever 
fellow, if sufficiently libertine and unprincipled.^^ Is 
the case much altered now, do you know ? 



What dull coxcombs your diplomatists at home 
generally are. I remember dining at Mr. Frere^s 
once in company with Canning and a few other inte- 
resting men. Just before dinner Lord called 

on Frere, and asked himself to dinner. From the 
moment of his entry he began to talk to the whole 
party, and in French — all of us being genuine English 
— and I was told his French was execrable. He had 
followed the Russian army into France, and seen a 
good deal of the great men concerned in the war ; of 
none of those things did he say a word, but went on, 
sometimes in Enghsh and sometimes in French, 
gabbling about cookery and dress and the like. At 
last he paused for a little — and I said a few words 
remarking how a great image may be reduced to the 



DIPLOMATISTS. 287 



ridiculous and contemptible by bringing the consti- 
tuent parts into prominent detail^ and mentioned the 
grandeur of the deluge and the preservation of life in 
Genesis and the Paradise Lost,* and the ludicrous 
effect produced by Drayton^s description in liis Noah^s 
Flood :— 

<^ And now the beasts are walking from the wood. 
As well of ravine, as that chew the cud. 
The king of beasts his fury doth suppress, 
And to the Ark leads down the lioness ; 
The bull for his beloved mate doth low. 
And to the Ark brings on the fair-eyed cow," &c. 

Hereupon Lord resumed, and spoke in raptures 

of a picture which he had lately seen of Noah^s Ark, 
and said the animals were all marching two and two, 
the little ones first, and that the elephants came last 
in great majesty and filled up the fore-ground. ^^ Ah! 
no doubt, my lord,^^ said Canning ; ^^ your elephants, 
wise fellows ! staid behind to pack up their trunks ! '' 
This floored the ambassador for half an hour. 

In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries almost 
all our ambassadors were distinguished men.f Eead 
Lloyd'^s State Worthies. The third-rate men of those 

* Genesis, c. vi. vii. Par. Lost, book xi., v. 728, &c. 

t Yet Diego de Mendoza, the author of Lazarillo de Tonnes, himself a 
veteran diplomatist, describes his brethren of the craft, and their duties, in 
the reigns of Charles the Emperor and Philip the Second, in the following 
terms : — 

O embajadores, puros majaderos, 
Que si los reyes quieren enganar, 
Comienzan por nosotros los primeros. 
Nuestro mayor negocio es, no danar, 
T jamas hacer cosa, ni dezilla, 
Que no corramos riesgo de ensenar. 

What a pity it is that modem diplomatists, who, for the most part, very 
carefully observe the precept contained in the last two lines of this passage, 
should not equally bear in mind the importance of the preceding remark — 
tJiat their principal business is Just to do no mischief. — Ed. 



288 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

days possessed an infinity of knowledge, and were 
intimately versed not only in the history, but even 
in the heraldry, of the countries in which they were 
resident. Men were almost always, except for mere 
compliments, chosen for their dexterity and experience 
— not, as now, by parliamentary interest. 



The sure way to make a foolish ambassador is to 
bring him up to it. What can an EngHsh minister 
abroad really want but an honest and bold heart, a 
love for his country and the ten commandments.^ 
Your art diplomatic is stuff: — no truly great man 
now would negociate upon any such shallow principles. 



August 30, 1833. 

Man cannot he Stationary. — Fatalism and Providence, — 
Sympathy in Joy. 

IF a man is not rising upwards to be an angel, 
depend upon it, he is sinking downwards to be a 
devil. He cannot stop at the beast. The most 
savage of men are not beasts : they are worse, a great 
deal worse. 

The conduct of the Mohammedan and Western 
nations on the subject of contagious plague illustrates 
the two extremes of error on the nature of God^s 
moral government of the world. The Turk changes 
Providence into fatalism; the Christian relies upon 
it — when he has nothing else to rely on. He does 
not practically rely upon it at all. 

For compassion a human heart suffices; but for 
full and adequate sympathy with joy an angel^s only. 



GREEK PAIITICLES. 289 

And ever remember, that the more exquisite and 
dehcate a flower of joy, the tenderer must be the 
hand that plucks it. 



September 2, 1833. 



Characteristic Temperament of Nations. — Greek Particles. — Latin 
Compounds. — Propertius. — Tibullus. — Lu^can. — StatiiLS. — 
Valerius Flaccus. — Claudian. — Persius. — Prudentius. — 
ffermesianax. 

nnHE English affect stimulant nourishment — beef 
-^ and beer. The French, excitants, irritants — 
nitrous oxide, alcohol, champagne. The Austrians, 
sedatives — hjoscyamus. The Russians, narcotics — 
opium, tobacco, and beng. 

It is worth particular notice how the style of Greek 
oratory, so full, in the times of political independence, 
of connective particles, some of passions, some of 
sensation only, and escaping the classification of mere 
grammatical logic, became, in the hands of the de- 
claimers and philosophers of the Alexandrian sera, and 
still later, entirely deprived of this peculiarity. So it 
was with Homer as compared with Nonnus, Tryphio- 
dorus, and the like. In the latter there are in the 
same number of lines fewer words by one haK than 
in the IHad. All the appoggiaturas of time are lost. 

All the Greek writers after Demosthenes and his 
contemporaries, what are they but the leavings of 
tyranny, in which a few precious things seem shel- 
tered by the mass of rubbish ! Yet, whenever Hberty 
began but to hope and strive, a Polybius appeared. 
Theocritus is almost the only instance I know of a 
man of true poetic genius flourishing under a tyranny. 



290 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

The old Latin poets attempted to compound as 
largely as the Greek ; hence in Ennius such words as 
helUgerentes, &c. In nothing did Yirgil show his 
judgment more than in rejecting these^ except just 
where common usage had sanctioned them^ as omni- 
potefos and a few more. He saw that the Latin was 
too far advanced in its formation^ and of too rigid a 
character, to admit such composition or agglutination. 
In this particular respect YirgiFs Latin is very admi- 
rable and deserving preference. Compare it with the 
language of Lucan or Statins, and count the number 
of words used in an equal number of Hues, and observe 
how many more short words Virgil has. 



I cannot quite understand the grounds of the high 
admiration which the ancients expressed forPropertius, 
and I own that Tibullus is rather insipid to me. 
Lucan was a man of great powers ; but what was to 
be made of such a shapeless fragment of party warfare, 
and so recent too ! He had fancy rather than imagi- 
nation, and passion rather than fancy. His taste was 
wretched, to be sure; still the Pharsalia is in my 
judgment a very wonderful work for such a youth as 
Lucan * was. 

I think Statins a truer poet than Lucan, though he 
is very extravagant sometimes. Valerius Flaccus is 
very pretty in particular passages. I am ashamed to 
say, I have never read SHius Italicus. Claudian I 
recommend to your careful perusal, in respect of his 
being properly the &st of the moderns, or at least the 

* Lacan died by the command of Nero, a.d. 65, in his twenty-sixth 
year. I think this should he printed at the beginning of every book of the 
Pharsalia. — Ed. 



DESTRUCTION OF JERUSALEM. 291 

transitional link between the Classic and the Gothic 
mode of thought. 

I call Persius hard — not obscure. He had a bad 
style ; but I dare say, if he had Kved,^ he would have 
learned to express liimseK in easier language. There 
are many passages in him of exquisite felicity, and his 
vein of thought is manly and pathetic. 

Prudentiust is curious for this, — that you see how 
Christianity forced allegory into the place of mytho- 
logy. Mr. Prere [6 (f)iX6Ka\oS) 6 KakoKayaOos:'] used to 
esteem the Latin Christian poets of Italy very highly, 
and no man in our times was a more competent judge 
than he. 

How very pretty are those hues of Hermesianax in 
Athenseus about the poets and poetesses of Greece ! J 



September 4, 1833. 

Destruction of Jerusalem. — Fpic Poem. — German and English. — 
Modern Travels. — Paradise Lost. 

I HA YE already told you that in my opinion the 
destruction of Jerusalem is the only subject now 
left for an epic poem of the highest kind. Yet, with 
all its great capabilities, it has this one grand defect — 
that, whereas a poem, to be epic, must have a personal 
interest, — ^in the destruction of Jerusalem no genius 
or skin could possibly preserve the interest for the 
hero from being merged in the interest for the event. 

* Aulus Persius Flaccus died in the 30th year of his age, a.d. 62. — Ed. 
t Aiirelius Prudentius Clemens was horn a.d. 348, in Spain. — Ed. 
:|: See the fragment from the Leontium : — 

O/'/jv /u,l)i +:/Ao5 i^'iog oiv/iyccyiv O'luy^oio 

'Ay^/oW'/^v, Qn^YiO-a-otv frlfka,/xivo<; xiQaey^f 
AjhoQ-v x. r. A. Athen. xiii. s. 71. — Ed, 

u 2 



292 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

The fact is^ the event itself is too subHnie and over- 
wheLning. 

In my judgment^ an epic poem must either be 
national or mundane. As to Arthur^ you could not 
by any means make a poem on him national to Eng- 
lishmen. What have we to do with him ? Milton 
saw this^ and with a judgment at least equal to his 
genius^ took a mundane theme — one common to aU 
mankind. His Adam and Eve are all men and 
women inclusively. Pope satirises Milton for making 
God the Eather talk like a school divine.*' Pope was 
hardly the man to criticise Milton. The truth is, the 
judgment of Milton in the conduct of the celestial 
part of his story is very exquisite. Wherever God is 
represented as directly acting as Creator, without any 
exhibition of his own essence, Milton adopts the 
simplest and sternest language of the Scriptures. 
He ventures upon no poetic diction, no amplification, 
no pathos, no affection. It is truly the Yoice of the 
Word of the Lord coming to, and acting on, the 
subject Chaos. But, as some personal interest was 
demanded for the purposes of poetry, Milton takes 
advantage of the dramatic representation of God^s 
address to the the Son, the Eilial Alterity, and in those 
addresses slips in, as it were by stealth, language of 
affection, or thought, or sentiment. Indeed, although 
Milton was undoubtedly a high Arian in his mature 
life, he does in the necessity of poetry give a greater 
objectivity to the Eather and the Son, than he would 

* *' Milton's strong pinion now not Heav'n can bound, 
Now, serpent-like, in prose lie sweeps tlie ground ; 
In quibbles angel and archangel join. 
And God the Father turns a school divine." 

Hoe., Book II., Ep.i., 99. 



THE TRINITY. 293 



have justified in argument. He was very wise in 
adopting the strong antlii'opomorphism of the Hebrew 
Scriptures at once. Compare the Paradise Lost with 
KlopstocFs Messiah^ and you mil learn to appreciate 
Milton^s judgment and skill quite as much as his 



The conquest of India by Bacchus might afford 
scope for a very brilliant poem of the fancy and the 
understanding. 

It is not that the German can express external 
imagery more fully than English ; but that it can 
flash more images at once on the mind than the 
English can. As to mere power of expression, I 
doubt whether even the Greek surpasses the English. 
Pray, read a very pleasant and acute dialogue in 
SchlegeFs Athenaeum between a German, a Greek, a 
Eoman, Italian, and a Frenchman, on the merits of 
their respective languages. 



I wish the naval and military officers who write 
accounts of their travels would just spare us their 
sentiment. The Magazines introduced this cant. Let 
these gentlemen read and imitate the old captains and 
admirals, as Dampier, &c. 



October 15, 1833. 
The Trinity. — Incarnation . — Iteclemption. — Education. 

T^HE Trinity is the idea : the Incarnation, which 
-'- implies the Pall, is the fact : the Redemption is 
the mesothesis of the two — that is — the religion* 



294 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 

If you bring up your children in a way which puts 
them out of sympathy with the religious feelings of 
the nation in which they live^ the chances are^ that 
they will ultimately turn out ruffians or fanatics — and 
one as likely as the other. 



October 23, 1833. 

Elegy. — Lavacrum Pallados. — Greek and Latin Pentameter, — 

Milton's Latin Poems. — Poetical Filter, — Gray and Cotton, 

T7LEGY is the form of poetry natural to the reflec- 
-*-^ tive mind. It may treat of any subject^ but it 
must treat of no subject for itself; but always and 
exclusively with reference to the poet himself. As he 
will feel regret for the past or desire for the future^ so 
sorrow and love become the principal themes of elegy. 
Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone^ or absent 
and future. The elegy is the exact opposite of the 
Homeric epic^ in which all is purely external and 
objective^ and the poet is a mere voice. 

The true lyric ode is subjective too ; but then it 
delights to present things as actually existing and 
visible^ although associated with the past, or coloured 
highly by the subject of the ode itself. 

I think the Lavacrum Pallados of CaUimachus very 
beautiful indeed, especially that part about the mother 
of Tiresias and Minerva.* I have a mind to try how 
it would bear translation; but what metre have we 
to answer in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the 
Greeks ? 

//.otri^oc Tu^itricco, text evTroxa, ;^<w§;? tyivro' — x. r. A.. — v. 57, &C. 



^^THE POETICAL EILTER/^ 295 

I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse 
to Ovid^s^ though^ observe^ I don^t dispute his taste 
with reference to the genius of his own language. 
Augustus Sclilegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs 
on the King of Prussians going down the Rhine^ in 
which he had almost exclusively adopted the manner 
of Propertius. I thought them very elegant. 



You may find a few minute faults in Milton^s Latin 
verses ; but you will not persuade me that^ if these 
poems had come down to us as written in the age of 
Tiberius^ we should not have considered them to be 
very beautiful. 

I once thought of making a collection^ — to be called 
" The Poetical Filter/" — upon the principle of simply 
omitting from the old pieces of lyrical poetry which 
we have^ those parts in wliich the whim or the bad 
taste of the author or the fasliion of his age prevailed 
over his genius. You would be surprised at the 
number of exquisite tvJioles which might be made by 
this simple operation^ and^ perhaps, by the insertion of 
a single line or half a line, out of poems which are 
now utterly disregarded on account of some odd or 
incongruous passages in them ; — ^just as whole volumes 
of Wordsworth^s poems were formerly neglected or 
laughed at, solely because of some few wilfulnesses, if 
I may so call them, of that great man — whilst at the 
same time five-sixths of his poems would have been 
admired, and indeed popular, if they had appeared 
without those drawbacks, under the name of BjTon 
or Moore or Campbell, or any other of the fashionable 
favourites of the day. But he has won the battle 



296 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

now^ ay ! and will wear the crown^ whilst English is 
English. 

I think there is something very majestic in Gray^s 
Installation Ode ; but as to the Bard and the rest of 
his lyrics^ I must say I think them frigid and arti- 
ficial. There is more real lyric feeling in Cotton'^s 
Ode on "Winter.* 

* Let me borrow Mr. Wordsworth's account of, and quotation from, this 
poem : — 

" Finally, I will refer to Cotton's ' Ode upon Winter,' an admirable com- 
position, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he 
lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of Fancy. The middle 
part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, 
with his retinue, as ' a palsied king,' and yet a military monarch, advancing 
for conquest with his army ; the several bodies of which, and their arms and 
equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of 
fanciful comparisons, which indicate, on the part of the poet, extreme activity 
of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling. He retires 
from the foe into his fortress, where — 

a magazine 
Of sovereign juice is cellared in ; 
Liquor that will the siege maintain 
Should Phoebus ne'er return again. 

Though myself a water-drinker, I cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing 
what follows, as an instance still more happy of Fancy employed in the 
treatment of feeling than, in its preceding passages, the poem supplies of 
her management of forms. 

'Tis that, that gives the Poet rage, 
And thaws the gelly'd blood of Age ; 
Matures the young, restores the Old, 
And makes the fainting coward bold 

It lays the careful head to rest. 
Calms palpitations in the breast. 
Renders our lives' misfortune sweet; 

* * * * 

Then let the chill Scirocco blow, 
And gird us round with hills of snow ; 
Or else go whistle to the shore. 
And make the hollow mountains roar : 

Whilst we together jovial sit 
Careless, and crowned with mirth and wit; 
Where, though bleak winds confine us home, 
Our fancies round the world shall roam. 



HOMERIC HEROES IN SHxVKSPEARE. 297 

November 1, 1833. 

Homeric Heroes in Shakspcare. — Dryden. — Dr. Johnson. — Scott^s 
Novels. — Scope of Christianity. 

COMPARE Nestor, Ajax, Achilles, &c., in the 
Troilus and Cressida of Shakspeare with their 
namesakes in the Iliad. The old heroes seem all to 
have been at school ever since. I scarcely know a 
more striking instance of the strength and pregnancy 
of the Gotliic mind. 

Dryden^s genius was of that sort which catches fire 
by its own motion; his chariot wheels get hot by 
driving fast. 

Dr. Johnson seems to have been really more power- 

We '11 think of all the friends we know, 
And drink to all worth drinking to ; 
When, having drunk all thine and mine, 
We rather siiall want healths than wine. 

But where friends fail us, we '11 supply 
Our friendships with our charity ; 
Men that remote in sorrows live 
Shall by our lusty brimmers thrive. 

We '11 drink the wanting into wealth, 
And those that languish into health, 
Th' afflicted into joy, th' opprest 
Into security and rest. 

The worthy in disgrace shall find 
Favour return again more kind, 
And in restraint who stifled lie 
Shall taste the air of liberty. 

The brave shall triumph in success. 
The lovers shall have mistresses, 
Poor unregarded virtue, praise, 
And the neglected poet, bays. 

Tbns shall our healths do others good, 
Whilst we ourselves do all we would; 
For, freed from envy and from care. 
What would we be but what we are? " 
Preface to the editions of Mr. TT.'s FoemSf in 1815 and 1820. — Ed, 



298 Coleridge's table talk. 

fill in discoursing viva voce in conversation tlian with 
his pen in hand. It seems as if the excitement of 
company called something hke reality and consecu- 
tiveness into his reasonings^ wliich in his writings I 
cannot see. His antitheses are almost always verbal 
only ; and sentence after sentence in the Rambler may 
be pointed out to which you cannot attach any definite 
meaning whatever. In his political pamphlets there 
is more truth of expression than^^in his other works, 
for the same reason that his conversation is better 
than his writings in general. He was more excited 
and in earnest. 

When I am very iU indeed^ I can read Scott's novels, 
and they are almost the only books I can then read. 
I cannot at such times read the Bible; my mind 
reflects on it, but I can't bear the open page. 



Unless Christianity be viewed and felt in a high 
and comprehensive way, how large a portion of our 
intellectual and moral nature does it leave without 
object and action ! 

Let a young man separate I from Me as far as he 
possibly can, and remove Me till it is almost lost in 
the remote distance. ^^ I am me," is as bad a fault 
in intellectuals and morals as it is in grammar, whilst 
none but one — God — can say, ^^ I am I," or ^^ That 
I am." 



H 



November 9, 1833. 
Times of Charles I, 

OW many books are stiU written and published 
about Charles the First and his times ! Such is 



MESSENGER OF THE COVENANT. 299 

the fresh and enduring interest of that grand cKsis of 
morals^ religion^ and government ! But these books 
are none of them works of any genius or imagination; 
not one of these authors seems to be able to throw 
himself back into that age ; if they did^ there would 
be less praise and less blame bestowed on both sides. 



December 21, 1833. 

Messenger of the Covenant. — Prophecy. — Logic of Ideas and 
of Syllogisms. 

WHEN I reflect upon the subject of the messenger 
of the covenant^ and observe the distinction 
taken in the prophets between the teaching and suffer- 
ing Christy — the Priest^ who was to precede^ and the 
triumphant Messiah^ the Judge^ who was to follow^ — 
and how Jesus always seems to speak of the Son of 
Man in a future sense^ and yet always at the same 
time as identical with himself; I sometimes think 
that our Lord himself in his earthly career was the 
Messenger ; and that the way is now still prej)aring 
for the great and visible advent of the Messiah of 
Glory. I mention this doubtingly. 



What a beautiful sermon or essay might be written 
on the growth of prophecy ! — from the germ^ no 
bigger than a man''s hand^ in Genesis^ till the column 
of cloud gathers size and height and substance^ and 
assumes the shape of a perfect man; just like the 
smoke in the Arabian Nights^ tale^ which comes up 
and at last takes a genie^s shape.* 

* The passage in Mr. Coleridge's mind was, I suppose, the following : — 
" He (the fisherman) set it hefore htm, and while he looked upon it atten- 
tively, there came out a very thick smoke, which obliged him to retire two or 



300 COLEUIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

The* logic of ideas is to that of syllogisms as the 
infinitesimal calculus to common arithmetic ; it proves, 
but at the same time supersedes. 



January 1, 1834. 
Landor's Poetry. — BeaiUy. — Chronological Arrangement of Works, 

TT7HAT is it that Mr. Landor wants^ to make him 
^^ a poet ? His powers are certainly very consi- 
derable, but he seems to be totally deficient in that 
modifying faculty, which compresses several units 
into one whole. The truth is, he does not possess 
imagination in its highest form, — that of stamping 
ilpiu nelV uno. Hence his poems, taken as wholes, 
are unintelligible; you have eminences excessively 
bright, and all the ground around and between them 
in darkness. Besides which, he has never learned, 
with all liis energy, how to write simple and lucid 
English. 



The useful, the agreeable, the beautiful, and the 
good, are distinguishable. You are wrong in resolv- 
ing beauty into expression or interest; it is quite 
distinct ; indeed it is opposite, although not contrary. 
Beauty is an immediate presence, between {inter) 
wliich and the beholder nihil est. It is always one 
and tranquil ; whereas the interesting always disturbs 
and is disturbed. I exceedingly regret the loss of 

three paces from it. The smoke ascended to the clouds, and extending itself 
along the sea, and upon the shore, formed a great mist, which, we may well 
imagine, did mightily astonish the fisherman. When the smoke was all out 
of the vessel, it reunited itself, and became a solid body, of which there was 
formed a genie twice as high as the greatest of giants." Story of the 
Fisherman. Ninth Night. — Ed. 



TOLERATION. 301 



those essays on beauty, which I wrote in a Bristol 
newspaper. I would give much to recover them. 

After all you can say, I still think the chronolo- 
gical order the best ior arranging a poet's works. All 
your divisions are in particular instances inadequate, 
and they destroy the interest which arises from watch- 
ing the progress, maturity, and even the decay of 
genius, 

January 3, 1834. 

Toleration. — Norwegians. 

IHAYE known books written on Tolerance, the 
proper title of which would be— intolerant or 
intolerable books on tolerance. Should not a man 
who vrrites a book expressly to inculcate tolerance 
learn to treat with respect, or at least with indulgence, 
articles of faith wliicli tens of thousands ten times 
told of his fellow-subjects or his fellow- creatures 
believe mth all their souls, and upon the truth of 
which they rest their tranquillity in this world, and 
their hopes of salvation in the next, — those articles 
being at least maintainable against his arguments, and 
most certainly innocent in themselves ? — Is it fitting 
to run Jesus Christ in a silly parallel with Socrates 
— the Being whom thousand millions of intellectual 
creatures, of whom I am a humble unit, take to be 
their Redeemer, with an Athenian pliilosopher, of 
whom we should know nothing except through his 
glorification in Plato and Xenophon ? — And then to 
hitch Latimer and Servetus together ! To be sure 
there was a stake and a fire in each case, but where 
the rest of the resemblance is I cannot see. What 



302 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



ground is there for throwing the odium of Servetus^s 
death upon Calvin alone ? Why, the mild Melanc- 
thon wrote to Calvin,* expressly to testify his concur- 
rence in the act, and no doubt he spoke the sense of 
the German reformers; the Swiss churches advised 
the punislnnent in formal letters, and I rather think 
there are letters from the English divines, approving 
Calvin^s conduct ! — Before a man deals out the slang 
of the day about the great leaders of the Reformation, 
he should learn to throw himseK back to the age of 
the Reformation, when the two great parties in the 
church were eagerly on the watch to fasten a charge 
of heresy on the other. Besides, if ever a poor fanatic 
thrust himself into the fire, it was Michael Servetus. 
He was a rabid enthusiast, and did every thing he 
could in the way of insult and ribaldry to provoke the 
feeling of the Cliristian church. He called the Trinity 
triceps monstrum et Cerhencm quendam tripartitum, 
and so on. 

Indeed, how should the principle of religious toler- 
ation have been acknowledged at first? — It would 
. require stronger arguments than any which I have 
heard as yet, to prove that men in authority have not 
a right, involved in an imperative duty, to deter those 
under their control from teaching or countenancing 
doctrines which they believe to be damnable, and even 
to punish with death those who violate such prolii- 
bition. I am sure that Bellarmine would have had 
small difficulty in turning Locke round his fingers'* 
ends upon this ground. A right to protection I can 
understand ; but a right to toleration seems to me a 

* Melancthon's words are : — " Tuo jiidicio prorsus assentior. Affinno etiam 
vestros magistratus juste fecisse quod hommem blasphemum, re ordine 
judicata, inter feceruntr 14th Oct. 1554. — Ed. 



TOLERATION. 303 



contradiction in terms. Some criterion must in any 
case be adopted by the state ; otherwise it might be 
compelled to admit whatever hideous doctrine and 
practice any man or number of men may assert to be 
his or their religion^ and an article of his or their 
faith. It was the same Pope who commanded the 
Komanists of England to separate from the national 
churchy wliich previously their own consciences had 
not dictated^ nor the decision of any council^ — and 
who also commanded them to rebel against Queen 
Elizabeth, whom they were bound to obey by the laws 
of the land ; and if the Pope had authority for one, 
he must have had it for the other. The only true 
argument^ as it seems to me, apart from Cliristianity, 
for a discriminating toleration is, that it is of no use 
to attempt to stop heresy or schism by persecution, 
unless, perhaps, it be conducted upon the plan of 
direct warfare and massacre. You cannot preserve 
men in the faith by such means, though you may 
stifle for a while any open appearance of dissent. The 
experiment has now been tried, and it has failed ; and 
that is by a great deal the best argument for the 
magistrate against a repetition of it. 

I know this, — that if a parcel of fanatic missionaries 
were to go to Norway, and were to attempt to disturb 
the fervent and undoubting Lutheranism of the fine 
independent inhabitants of the interior of that coun- 
try, I should be right glad to hear that the busy fools 
had been quietly shipped off — any where. I don^t 
include the people of the seaports in my praise of the 
Norwegians ; — I speak of the agricultural population. 
If that country could be brought to maintain a million 
more of inhabitants, Norway might defy the world ; 



304 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

it would be avrapKrjs and impregnable ; but it is much 
under-banded now. 



January 12, 1834. 
Articles of Faith. — Modern Quakerism. — Devotional Spirit, — 
Sectaiianism. — Origen, 

T HAYE dra^^Ti up four or perhaps five articles of 
-*- faith^ by subscription^ or rather by assent^ to which 
I think a large comprehension might take place. My 
articles would exclude Unitarians^ and I am sorry to 
say^ members of the church of Eome^ but with this 
difference — that the exclusion of Unitarians would be 
necessary and perpetual ; that of the members of the 
church of Eome depending on each individuars own 
conscience and intellectual light. What I mean is 
this : — that the Eomanists hold the faith in Christy — 
but unhappily they also hold certain opinions^ partly 
ceremonial^ partly devotional^ partly speculative^ which 
have so fatal a facihty of being degraded into base^ 
corrupting^ and even idolatrous practices^ that if the 
Eomanist will make thei7i of the essence of his religion^ 
he must of course be excluded. As to the Quakers^ I 
hardly know what to say. An article on the sacra- 
ments would exclude them. My doubt is^ whether 
Baptism and the Eucharist are properly any parts of 
Christianity^ or not rather Christianity itself; — the 
one^ the initial conversion or lights — the other^ the 
sustaining and invigorating life ; — both together the 
(jfxSs Kat (o^r]y which are Christianity. A line can only 
begin once; hence,, there can be no repetition of 
baptism ; but a hne may be endlessly prolonged by 
continued production; hence the sacrament of love 
and Kfe lasts for ever. 



AllTICLES OF FAITH. 305 

But really there is no kno\\dng what the modern 
Quakers are, or believe, excepting this — that they are 
altogether degenerated from their ancestors of the 
seventeenth century. I should call modern Quakerism, 
so far as I know it as a scheme of faith, a Socinian 
Calvinism. Penn himself was a Sabellian, and seems 
to have disbelieved even the historical fact of the Kfe 
and death of Jesus — most certainly Jesus of Xazareth 
was not Penn^s Clirist, if he had any. It is amusing 
to see the modern Quakers appealing now to liistory 
for a confirmation of their tenets and discipline — and 
by so doing, in effect abandoning the strong hold of 
their founders. As an imj[)enum in imperio, I tliink 
the original Quakerism a conception worthy of Lycur- 
gus. Modern Quakerism is like one of those gigantic 
trees which are seen in the forests of North America — 
apparently flourishing, and preserving all its greatest 
stretch and spread of branches ; but when you cut 
through an enormously thick and gnarled bark, you 
find the whole inside hollow and rotten. Modern 
Quakerism, like such a tree, stands upright by help 
of its inveterate bark alone. Barh a Quaker, and he 
is a poor creature. 

How much the devotional spirit of the church has 
suffered by that necessary evdl, the Reformation, and 
the sects which have sprung up subsequently to it ! 
All our modern prayers seem tongue-tied. We appear 
to be thinking more of avoiding an heretical expres- 
sion or thought than of opening oui'selves to God. 
We do not pray with that entire, unsuspecting, 
unf earing, childlike profusion of feeling, wliich so 
beautifully shines forth in Jeremy Taylor and Andrewes 
and the writings of some of the older and better saints 



306 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

of the Eomish churchy particularly of that remarkable 
woman^ St. Theresa.* And certainly Protestants, in 
their anxiety to have the historical argument on their 
side, have brought down the origin of the E-omish 
errors too late. Many of them began, no doubt, in 
the Apostolic age itself; — I say errors — not heresies, 
as that dullest of the fathers, Epiphanius, calls them. 
Epiphanius is very long and fierce upon the Ebionites. 
There may have been real heretics under that name ; 
but I believe that, in the beginning, the name was, 
on account of its Hebrew meaning, given to, or 
adopted by, some poor mistaken men — perhaps of 
the Nazarene way — ^who sold all their goods and 
lands, and were then obKged to beg. I think it not 
improbable that Barnabas was one of these chief men- 
dicants; and that the collection made by St. Paul 
was for them. You should read Ehenferd^s account 
of the early heresies. I think he demonstrates about 
eight of Epiphanius^s heretics to be mere nick-names 
given by the Jews to the Christians. Read ^^ Hermas, 
or the Shepherd,'^ of the genuineness of which and 
of the epistle of Barnabas I have no doubt. It is 
perfectly orthodox, but full of the most ludicrous 
tricks of gnostic fancy — ^the wish to find the New 
Testament in the Old. This gnosis is perceptible in 
the Epistle to the Hebrews, but kept exquisitely 
within the limit of propriety. In the others it is 
rampant, and most truly ^^puffeth up,^^ as St. Paul 
said of it. 

* She -was a native of Avila in Old Castile, and a Carmelite nun. Theresa 
established an order which she called the " Reformed," and which became 
very powerful. Her works are divided into ten books, of which her auto- 
biography forms a remarkable part. She died in 1582, and was canonised by 
Gregory XV., in 1622.— Ed. 



PROOF OF EXISTENCE OF GOD. 307 

What between the sectarians and the political 
economists^ the EngHsh are denationaHsed. England 
I see as a country^ but the English nation seem< 
obliterated. What could redintegrate us again ? Must 
it be another tlireat of foreign invasion ? 



I never can digest the loss of most of Origen^s 
works : he seems to have been almost the only very 
great scholar and genius combined amongst the early 
Fathers. Jerome was very inferior to liim. 



January 20, 1834. 
Some Men like Musical Glasses. — Suhlime and Nonsense. — Atheist. 



S' 



OME men are like musical glasses ; — to produce 
their finest tones^ you mast keep them wet. 



Well ! that passage is what I call the sublime 
dashed to pieces by cutting too close with the fiery- 
four-in-hand round the corner of nonsense. 



How did the Atheist get his idea of that God whom 
he denies ? 



February 22, 1834. 

Proof of Existence of God. — Kanfs Attempt — Plurality 

of Worlds. 

A SSUME the existence of God^ — and then the 
-^ harmony and fitness of the physical creation may 
be shown to correspond with and support such an 
assumption ; — but to set about proving the existence 
of a God by such means is a mere circle^ a delusion. It 
can be no proof to a good reasoner^ unless he violates 
all syllogistic logic^ and presumes his conclusion. 

x2 



308 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

Kant once set about proving the existence of God^ 
and a masterly effort it was.^ But in liis later great 
work^ the ^' Critique of the Pure Reason/^ he saw its 
fallacy^ and said of it — ^that if the existence could 
be proved at all^ it must be on the grounds indicated 
by him. 

I never could feel any force in the arguments for a 
plurality of worlds^ in the common acceptation of that 
term. A lady once asked me — ^^ What then could 
be the intention in creating so many great bodies^ so 
apparently useless to us ? ^'' I said — I did not know^ 
except^ perhaps^ to make dirt cheap. The vulgar 
inference is in alio genere, "What in the eye of an 
intellectual and omnipotent Being is the whole sidereal 
system to the soul of one man for whom Christ died ? 



March 1, 1834. 
A Reasoner, 

I AM by the law of my nature a reasoner. A 
person who should suppose I meant by that word^ 
an arguer^ would not only not understand me^ but 
would understand the contrary of my meaning. I can 
take no interest whatever in hearing or saying any- 
thing merely as a fact — merely as having happened. 
It must refer to something within me before I can 
regard it with any curiosity or care. My mind is 
always energic — I don^t mean energetic ; I require in 
everything what^ for lack of another word^ I may call 
propriety, — that is^ a reason^ why the thing is at all^ 

* In his essay, " Der einzig moglichc Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des 
Daseyns GottesT — " Tlie only possible argument or ground of proof for a 
demonstration of the existence of God." It was published in 1763; the 
" Critique " in 1781.— Ed. 



CRABBE AND SOUTHEY. 309 

and why it is there or then rather than elsewhere or at 
another time. 



March 5, 1834. 

Shahspeare^s Intellectual Action. — Or abbe and Southey. — Peter 
Simple and Tom CringWs Log. 

O HAKSPEAEE'S inteUectual action is wholly unlike 
^ that of Ben Jonson or Beaumont and Eletcher. 
The latter see the totality of a sentence or passage^ 
and then project it entire. Shakspeare goes on creating, 
and evolving B. out of A., and C. out of B., and so 
on, just as a serpent moves, which makes a fulcrum 
of its own body, and seems for ever twisting and 
untwisting its own strength. 



I think Crabbe and Southey are sometliing alike ; 
but Crabbers poems are founded on observation and 
real life — Southe/s on fancy and books. In facility 
they are equal, though Crabbers English is of course 
not upon a level with Southe/s, which is next door to 
faultless. But in Crabbe there is an absolute defect 
of the high imagination; he gives me little or no 
pleasure : yet, no doubt, he has much power of a 
certain kind, and it is good to cultivate, even at some 
pains, a cathoHc taste in literature. I read all sorts 
of books with some pleasure, except modern sermons 
and treatises on pohtical economy. 



I have received a great deal of pleasure from some 
of the modern novels, especially Captain Marryat's 
^^ Peter Simple.''^ That book is nearer Smollett than 
any I remember. And ^^ Tom Cringle^s Log ^^ in 
Blackwood is also most excellent. 



310 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



March 15, 1834. 

Chaucer. — Shakspeare. — Ben Jonson. — Beaumont and Fletcher, — 
Daniel. — Massinc/er. 

I TAKE unceasing delight in Chaucer. His manly 
cheerfulness is especially delicious to me in my 
old age.* How exquisitely tender he is_, and yet how 
perfectly free from the least touch of sickly melan- 
choly or morbid drooping ! The sympathy of the 
poet with the subjects of his poetry is particularly 
remarkable in Shakspeare and Chaucer ; but what the 
first effects by a strong act of imagination and mental 
metamorphosis^ the last does without any effort^ merely 
by the inborn kindly joyousness of his nature. How 
well we seem to know Chaucer! How absolutely 
nothing do we know of Shakspeare ! 

I cannot in the least allow any necessity for Chaucer^s 
poetry^ especially the Canterbury Tales,, being con- 
sidered obsolete. Let a few plain rules be given for 
sounding the final e of syllables^ and for expressing 
the termination of such words as ocea7z^ and nation, 
&c.^ as dissyllables^ — or let the syllables to be sounded 
in such cases be marked by a competent metrist. This 
simple expedient would^ ^Tith a very few trifling ex- 
ceptionSj where the errors are inveterate^ enable any 
reader to feel the perfect smoothness and harmony of 
Chaucer^s verse. As to understanding his language, 
if you read twenty pages with a good glossary, you 
surely can find no further difficulty, even as it is ; but 

* Eighteen vears before, Mr. Coleridge entertained the same feelings 
towards Chaucer; — '"Through all the works of Chaucer there reigns a 
cheerfulness, a manly hilarity, which makes it almost impossible to doubt 
a correspondent habit of feeling in the author himself." Biog. Lit., vol. i., 
p. 32.— Ed. 



SHAKSPEARE. 311 



I should have no objection to see this done : — Strike 
out those words wliich are now obsolete^ and I will 
venture to say that I wiU replace every one of them 
by words still in use out of Chaucer himself^ or Gower 
his disciple. I don^t want this myself : I rather like 
to see the significant terms which Chaucer unsuccess- 
fully offered as candidates for admission into our lan- 
guage ; but surely so very shght a change of the text 
may well be pardoned^ even by \A2.Qk-leUeTati, for the 
pm-pose of restoring so great a poet to his ancient 
and most deserved popularity. 



Shakspeare is of no age. It is idle to endeavour to 
support his phrases by quotations from Ben Jonson, 
Beaumont and Fletcher^ &c. His language is entirely 
his own^ and the younger dramatists imitated him. 
The construction of Shakspeare^s sentences^ whether 
in verse or prose^ is the necessary and homogeneous 
veliicle of his peculiar manner of thinking. His is 
not the style of the age. More particularly^ Shak- 
speare^s blank verse is an absolutely new creation. 
Eead Daniel "^ — the admirable Daniel — in his ^^ Civil 
Wars/^ and ^^ Triumphs of Hymen.''^ The style and 
language are just such as any very pure and manly 
writer of the present day — Wordsworth^ for example 
— would use ; it seems quite modern in comparison 

* "This poet's well-merited epithet is that of the ' well-languaged Daniel;^ 
but, likewise, and hy the consent of his contemporaries, no less than all suc- 
ceeding critics, the 'prosaic Daniel.' Yet those who thus designate this 
wise and amiable writer, from the frequent incorrespondency of his diction 
with his metre, in the majority of his compositions, not only deem them 
valuable and interesting on other accounts, but mlUngly admit that there 
are to be found throughout his poems, and especially in his Epistles and in 
his Hymens Triumph, many and exquisite specimens of that style, which, 
as the neutral ground of prose and verse, is common to both." — Biog. lAt., 
vol. u., p. 82. 



312 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

with the style of Shakspeare. Ben Jonson^s blank 
verse is very masterly and individual, and perhaps 
Massinger'^s is even still nobler. In Beaumont and 
Fletcher it is constantly shpping into lyricisms. 

I beheve Shakspeare was not a whit more intelli- 
gible in his own day than he is now to an educated 
man, except for a few local allusions of no consequence. 
As I said, he is of no age — nor, I may add, of any 
religion, or party, or profession. The body and sub- 
stance of his works came out of the unfathomable 
depths of his own oceanic mind : his observation and 
reading, which was considerable, supplied him with 
the drapery of his figures.* 



As for editing Beaumont and Pletcher, the task 
would be one 'hnmensi lahoris. The confusion is now 
so great, the errors so enormous, that the editor must 
use a boldness quite unallowable in any other case. 
All I can say as to Beaumont and Metcher is, that I 
can point out well enough where something has been 
lost, and that something so and so was probably 
in the original ; but the law of Shakspeare^s thought 
and verse is such, that I feel convinced that not 
only could I detect the spurious, but supply the 
genuine, word. 

* Mr. Coleridge called Shakspeare " the myriad-minded man^'' eiyvi^ /u,v^io ovs 
— "a phrase," said he, "which I have horrowed from a Greek monk, 
who applies it to a patriarch of Constantinople. I might have said, 
that I have reclaimed, rather than horrowed, it, for it seems to belong to 
Shakspeare dejure singulari, et ex jprivilegio naturoer See Biog. Lit., vol. ii., 
p. 13.— Ed. 



lewis's ^^jahatca journal/' 313 

March 20, 1834. 

Lord Byron and H. Walpole's " Mysterious Mother ^ — Lewis's 
^' Jamaica Journal.'''' 

LORD BYEON, as quoted by Lord Dover,* says, 
that the ^^ Mysterious Mother'' raises Horace 
Walpole above every author living in his, Lord 
Byron's, time. Upon which I venture to remark, 
first, that I do not beheve that Lord Byron spoke 
sincerely ; for I suspect that he made a tacit exception 
in favour of liimseK at least; — secondly, that it is a 
miserable mode of comparison wliich does not rest on 
difference of kind. It proceeds of envy and mahce 
and detraction to say that A. is higher than B, unless 
you show that they are in pari materia ; — thirdly, 
that the ^^ Mysterious Mother " is the most disgust- 
ing, vile, detestable composition that ever came from 
the hand of man. No one with a spark of true 
manliness, of wliich Horace Walpole had none, could 
have written it. As to the blank verse, it is indeed 
better than Eowe's and Thomson's, which was ex- 
ecrably bad : — any approach, therefore, to the manner 
of the old dramatists was, of course, an improve- 
ment j but the loosest hues in Shirley are superior 
to Walpole's best. 

Lewis's "Jamaica Journal" is delightful; it is 
almost the only unaffected book of travels or touring 

* In tlie memoir prefixed to the correspondence ■with Sir. H. Mann, Lord 
Byron's words are : — " He is the ultimus Romanorum, the author of the 
* Mysterious Mother/ a tragedy of the highest order, and not a puling 
love play. He is the father of the first romance, and of the last tragedy, 
in our language; and surely worthy of a higher place than any living 
author, be he who he may." — Prefoxe to 3Iarino Faliero. Is not " Romeo 
and Juliet " a love play ? — But why reason about such insincere, splenetic 
trash ?— Ed. 



S14j coleridge^s table talk. 

I have read of late years. You have the man himself, 
and not an inconsiderable man, — certainly a much 
finer mind than I supposed before from the perusal of 
his romances, &c. It is by far his best work, and will 
live and be popular. Those verses on the Hours are 
very pretty; but the Isle of Devils is, like his romances, 
— a fever dream — horrible, without point or terror. 



April 16, 1834. 
Sicily. — Malta. — Sir Alexander Ball. 

T POUND that everything in and about Sicily had 
-^ been exaggerated by travellers, except two things 
— the folly of the government and the wTetchedness 
of the people. Thei/ did not admit of exaggeration. 

ReaUy you may learn the fundamental principles 
of political economy in a very compendious way, by 
taking a short tour through Sicily, and simply re- 
versing in your own mind every law, custom, and 
ordinance you meet with. I never was in a country 
in which everything proceeding from man was so 
exactly wrong. You have peremptory ordinances 
against making roads, taxes on the passage of 
common vegetables from one miserable village to 
another, and so on. 

By the by, do you know any parallel in modern 
history to the absurdity of our giving a legislative 
assembly to the Sicihans? It exceeds an)i;hing I 
know. This precious legislature passed two bills 
before it was knocked on the head : the first was, to 
render lands inalienable; and the second, to cancel 
all debts due before the date of the bill. 



SIR ALEXANDER BALL. 815 



And then consider the gross ignorance and folly of 
our laying a tax upon the Sicilians ! Taxation in its 
proper sense can only exist where there is a free cir- 
culation of capital^ labour^ and commodities tliroughout 
the community. But to tax the people in countries 
like Sicily and Corsica^ where there is no internal 
communication^ is mere robbery and confiscation. A 
crown taken from a Corsican living in the sierras 
would not get back to him again in ten years. 

It is interesting to pass from Malta to Sicily — 
from the liighest specimen of an inferior race^ the 
Saracenic^ to the most degraded class of a superior 
race^ the European. 

No tongue can describe the moral corruption of the 
Maltese when the island was surrendered to us. There 
was not a family in it in which a wife or a daughter 
was not a kept mistress. A marquis of ancient family 
appHed to Sir Alexander Ball to be appointed his 
valet. ^^ My valet V^ said Ball^ ^^ what can you mean^ 
sir?^^ The marquis said^ he hoped he should then 
have had the honour of presenting petitions to his 
Excellency. " Oh^ that is it^ is it ? '' said Sir Alex- 
ander : '^ my valet^ sir^ brushes my clothes and brings 
them to me. If he dared to meddle with matters of 
pubhc business^ I should kick him down stairs.''"' 

In shorty Malta was an Augean stable^ and Ball 
had all the inclination to be a Hercules.* His task 

* I refer the reader to the five concluding essays of the third volume of the 
" Friend," as a specimen of what Mr. C. might have done as a biographer if 
an irresistible instinct had not devoted him to profounder labours. As a 
sketch — and it pretends to nothing more — is there anything more perfect in 
our literature than the monument raised in those essays to the memory of 
Sir Alexander Ball ? — and there are some touches added to the character of 
Nelson, which the reader, even of Southey's matchless Life of our hero, will 
find both new and interesting.— Ed. 



316 COLERIDGE'S TABLE TALK. 

was most difficulty although his qualifications were 
most remarkable. I remember an Enghsh officer of 
very high rank soliciting him for the renewal of a 
pension to an abandoned woman who had been noto- 
riously treacherous to us. That officer had promised 
the woman as a matter of course^ — she having 
sacrificed her daughter to him. Ball was determined, 
as far as he could, to prevent Malta from being made 
a nest of home patronage. He considered, as was 
the fact, that there was a contract between England 
and the Maltese. Hence the government at home, 
especially Dundas, disliked him, and never allowed 
him any other title than that of Civil Commissioner. 
We have, I believe, nearly succeeded in alienating 
the hearts of the inhabitants from us. Every officer 
in the island ought to be a Maltese, except those 
belonging to the immediate executive: 100^. per 
annum to a Maltese, to enable him to keep a gilt 
carriage, will satisfy him where an Englishman must 
have 2000^. 

May 1, 1834. 
Camhridge Petition to admit Dissenters, 

THEEE are, to my grief, the names of some men 
to the Cambridge petition for admission of the 
Dissenters to the University, whose cheeks I think 
must have burned with shame at the degrading 
patronage and befouling eulogies of the democratic 
press, and at seeing themselves used as the tools of 
the open and rancorous enemies of the church. How 
miserable to be held up for the purpose of inflicting in- 
sult upon men, whose worth and ability and sincerity 
you well know, — and this by a faction banded together 



CORN LAWS. 317 



like obscene dogs and cats and serpents^ against a 
church wliich }'ou profoundly revere ! The time — 
the time — the occasion and the motive ought to have 
been argument enough^ that even if the measure were 
right or harmless in itself, not now, nor with such as 
these J was it to be effected ! 



May 3, 1834. 
Corn Laws, 

THOSE who argue that England may safely depend 
upon a supply of foreign corn^ if it grow none or 
an insufficient quantity of its own^ forget that they 
are subjugating the necessaries of life itself to the 
mere luxuries or comforts of society. Is it not cer- 
tain that the price of corn abroad will be raised upon 
us as soon as it is once known that we must buy ? — 
and when that fact is known^ in what sort of a situa- 
tion shall we be ? Besides this^ the argument sup- 
poses that agriculture is not a positive good to the 
nation^ taken in and by itself, as a mode of existence 
for the people^ which supposition is false and per- 
nicious; and if we are to become a great horde of 
manufacturers^ shall we not^ even more than at pre- 
sent, excite the ill-will of aU the manufacturers of 
other nations ? It has been already shown, in evidence 
which is before all the world, that some of our manu- 
facturers have acted upon the accursed principle of 
deliberately injuring foreign manufacturers, if they 
can, even to the ultimate disgrace of the country and 
loss to themselves. 



318 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 



May 19, 1834. 
Christian Sahbath. 

TTOW grossly misunderstood the genuine character 
-^-*- of the Christian sabbath^ or Lord^s-daj_, seems 
to be even by the church ! To confound it with the 
Jewish sabbath^ or to rest its observance upon the 
fourth commandment^ is^ in my judgment^ heretical, 
and would so have been considered in the primitive 
church. That cessation from labour on the Lord^s 
day could not have been absolutely incumbent on 
Christians for two centuries after Christ, is apparent ; 
because during that period the greater part of the 
Christians were either slaves or in ofBcial situations 
under Pagan masters or superiors, and had duties to 
perform for those who did not recognise the day. 
And we know that St. Paul sent back Onesimus to 
his master, and told every Christian slave, that, being 
a Christian, he was free in his mind indeed, but still 
must serve his earthly master, although he might 
laudably seek for his personal freedom also. If the 
early Cliristians had refused to work on the Lord^s 
day, rebellion and civil war must have been the 
immediate consequences. But there is no notice of 
any such cessation. 

The Jewish sabbath was commemorative of the ter- 
mination of the great act of creation ; it was to record 
that the world had not been from eternity, nor had 
arisen as a dream by itself, but that God had created 
it by distinct acts of power, and that he had hallowed 
the day or season in which he rested or desisted from 
his work. "When our Lord arose from the dead, the 
old creation was, as it were, superseded, and the new 



CHRISTIAN SABBATH. 319 

creation then began ; and therefore the first day and 
not the last day, the coinmencement and not the end^ 
of the work of God was solemnised. 

Luther, in speaking of the good hy itself, and the 
good/??r iU expediency alone, instances the observance 
of the Christian day of rest,— a day of repose from 
manual labour, and of activity in spiritual labour, — a 
day of joy and co-operation in the work of Clmst^s 
creation. ^' Keep it holy^^ — says he — " for its use' 
sake, — both to body and soul ! But if anywhere the 
day is made holy for the mere da/s sake, — if any- 
where any one sets up its observance upon a Jewish 
foundation, then I order you to work on it, to ride 
on it, to dance on it, to feast on it — to do anything 
that shall reprove this encroachment on the Christian 
spirit and liberty ."^^ 

The early church distinguished the day of Christian 
rest so strongly from a fast, that it was unlawful for a 
man to bewail even his own sins, as such only, on that 
day. He was to bewail the sins of all, and to pray 
as one of the whole of Christ's body. 

And the English Reformers evidently took the 
same view of the day as Luther and the early church. 
But, unhappily, our church, in the reigns of James 
and Charles the First, was so identified with the undue 
advancement of the royal prerogative, that the puri- 
tanical Judaising of the Presbyterians was but too 
well seconded by the patriots of the nation, in re- 
sisting the wise efforts of the church to prevent the 
incipient alteration in the character of the day of 
rest. After the Restoration, the bishops and clergy 
in general adopted the view taken and enforced by 
their enemies. 



320 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

By the by, it is curious to observe^ in this semi- 
infidel and Malthusian Parliament, how the Sabba- 
tarian spirit unites itself with a rancorous hostility to 
that one institution, wliich alone, according to reason 
and experience, can insure the continuance of any 
general religion at all in the nation at large. Some 
of these gentlemen, who are for not letting a poor 
labouring man have a dish of baked potatoes on a 
Sunday, religionis gratia — (God forgive that audacious 
blashemy !) — are foremost among those who seem to 
live but in viUfying, weakening, and impoverishing 
the national church. I own my indignation boils 
over against such contemptible fellows. 

I sincerely wish to preserve a decent quiet on 
Sunday. I would prohibit compulsory labour, and 
put down operas, theatres, &c., for this plain reason 
— ^that if the rich be allowed to play, the poor will 
be forced, or, what comes to the same thing, will be 
induced, to work. I am not for a Paris Sunday. But 
to stop coaches, and let the gentleman^s carriage run, 
is monstrous. 



May 25, 1834. 

High Prizes and ReveniLes of the Chv/rch. 

YOUR argument against the high prizes in the 
church might be put strongly thus: — Admit 
that in the beginning it might have been fairly said, 
that some eminent rewards ought to be set apart for 
the purpose of stimulating and rewarding transcendant 
merit ; what have you to say now, after centuries of 
-experience to the contrary? — Have the high prizes 
been given to the highest genius, virtue, or learning ? 



HIGH PRIZES OF THE CHURCH. 321 

Is it not rather the truths as Jortin said^ that twelve 
votes in a contested election will do more to make a 
man a bishop than an admired commentary on the 
twelve minor prophets ? — To all wliich and the like I 
say again^ that yon ought not to reason from the 
abuse^ which may be rectified^ against the inherent 
uses of the thing. Ajjjmnt the most deserving — and 
the prize will answer its pui'pose. As to the bishops^ 
incomes, — in the fii'st place, the net receipts — that 
wliich the bishops may spend — have been confessedly 
exaggerated beyond measm'e ; but, waiving that, and 
allowing the liighest estimate to be correct, I should 
like to have the disposition of the episcopal revenue 
in any one year by the late or the present Bishop of 
Durham, or the present Bishops of London or Win- 
chester, compared with that of the most benevolent 
nobleman in England, of any party in politics. I 
firmly believe that the former give away in charity of 
one kind or another, public, of&cial, or private, three 
times as much in proportion as the latter. You may 
have a hunks or two, now and then ; but so you would 
much more certainly, if you were to reduce the in- 
comes to 2000^. per annum. As a body, in my 
opinion, the clergy of England do in truth act as if 
their property were impressed with a trust to the 
utmost extent that can be demanded by those who 
affect to believe, ignorantly or not, that lying legend 
of a tripartite or quadripartite division of the titlie 
by law. 



322 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

May 31, 1834. 

Sir C, Wether elVs Speech. — National Clmrch. — Dissenters, — 

Papacy. — Universities. 

T THINK Sir Charles Wetherell's speech before the 
-*- Privy Council very effective. I doubt if any 
other lawyer in Westminster Hall could have done 
the thing so well. 

The National Church requires^ and is required by^ 
the Christian Church for the perfection of each. For 
if there were no national Churchy the mere spiritual 
Church would either become, like the Papacy, a 
dreadful tyranny over mind and body; — or else would 
fall abroad into a multitude of enthusiastic sects, as 
in England in the seventeenth century. It is my deep 
conviction that, in a country of any religion at all, 
liberty of conscience can only be permanently pre- 
served by means and under the shadow of a national 
Church, — a political establishment connected \vith, 
but distinct from, the Spiritual Cliurch. 



I sometimes hope that the undisguised despotism 
of temper of the Dissenters may at last awaken a 
jealousy in the laity of the Church of England. But 
the apathy and inertness are, I fear, too profound — 
too providential. . 

"Whatever the Papacy may have been on the Con- 
tinent, it was always an unqualified evil to this country. 
It destroyed what was rising of good, and introduced 
a thousand evils of its own. The Papacy was and stiU 
is essentially extra-national ; — it affects, temporally y to 
do that which the spiritual Church of Christ can alone 
(Jo — to break down the natural distinctions of nations. 



SCHILLER^S VERSIFICATION. 323 

Now, as the Roman Papacy is in itseK local and pecu- 
liar, of course tliis attempt is nothing but a direct 
attack on the political independence of other nations. 
The institution of Universities was the single check 
on the Papacy. The Pope always hated and maligned 
the Universities. The old ccenobitic establishments 
of England were converted — perverted, rather — into 
monasteries and other monking receptacles. You see 
it was at Oxford that Wicliffe alone found protection 
and encouragement. 



June 2, 1834. 
Schiller's Versification. — German Blank Verse. 

OCHILLER'S blank verse is bad. He moves in 
^ it as a fly in a glue bottle. His thoughts have 
their connection and variety, it is true, but there is 
no sufficiently corresponding movement in the verse. 
How different from Shakspeare^s endless rhytlnns ! 

There is a nimiety — a too-muchness — in all Ger- 
mans. It is the national fault. Lessing had the best 
notion of blank verse. The trochaic termination of 
German words renders blank verse in that language 
almost impracticable. We have it in our di^amatic 
hendecasyllable ; but then we have a power of inter- 
wea\'ing the iambic close ad libitum. 



June 14, 1834. 

Roman Catholic Emancipation. — Duke of Wellington. — 

Coronation Oath, 

nPHE Eoman Catholic Emancipation Act — carried in 
-■- the violent, and, in fact, unprincipled manner it 
was — was in effect a Surinam toad ; — and the Eeform 
Bill, the Dissenters^ admission to the Universities, 

y 2 



COLERIDGE S TABLE TALK. 



and the attack on the Church,, are so many toadlets, 
one after another detaching themselves from their 
parent brute. 

If you say there is nothing in the Romish religion, 
sincerely felt, inconsistent with the duties of citizen- 
ship and allegiance to a territorial Protestant sovereign, 
cadit qucestio. For if that is once admitted, there can 
be no answer to the argument from numbers. Cer- 
tainly, if the religion of the majority of the people be 
innocuous to the interests of the nation, the majority 
have a natural right to be trustees of the nationalty — 
that property wliich is set apart for the nation'^s use, 
and rescued from the gripe of private hands. But 
when I say— 7/^r the nation's use — I mean the very 
reverse of what the Radicals mean. They would 
convert it to relieve taxation, which I call a private, 
personal, and perishable use. A nation^s uses are 
immortal. 

How lamentable it is to hear the Duke of Welling- 
ton expressing himself doubtingly on the abominable 
sophism that the Coronation Oath only binds the 
King as the executive power — thereby making a High- 
gate oath of it ! But the Duke is conscious of the 
ready retort which his language and conduct on the 
Emancipation Bill afford to his opponents. He is 
hampered by that affair. 



June 20, 1834. 
Corn Laws. — Modern Political Economy. 

TN the argument on the Corn Laws there is a jutera- 
-■- /BacTis eh aX\o yivos. It may be admitted that the 
great principles of commerce require the interchange of 



MODERN POLITICAL ECONOMY. 325 

commodities to be free ; but commerce, which is barter, 
has no proper range beyond luxuries or conveniences ; 
— it is properly the complement to the full existence 
and development of a state. But how can it be shown 
that the principles applicable to an interchange of 
conveniences or luxuries apply also to an interchange 
of necessaries ? No state can be such properly, which 
is not self-subsistent at least ; for no state that is not 
so, is essentially independent. The nation that cannot 
even exist without the commodity of another nation, 
is in effect the slave of that other nation. In common 
times, indeed, pecuniary interest will prevail, and pre- 
vent a ruinous exercise of the power which the nation 
supplying the necessary must have over the nation 
which has only the convenience or luxury to return ; 
but such interest, both in individuals and nations, 
will yield to many stronger passions. Is Holland any 
authority to the contrary ? If so. Tyre and Sidon and 
Carthage were so ! Would you put England on a 
footing with a country, which can be overrun in a 
campaign, and starved in a year ? 

The entire tendency of the modern or Malthusian 
pohtical economy is to denationalize. It would dig up 
the charcoal foundations of the temple of Ephesus to 
burn as fuel for a steam-engine ! 



June 21, 1834. 

MR. ■ , in his poem, makes trees co-eval with 
Chaos; — which is next door to Hans Sachse,* 
who, in describing Chaos, said it was so pitchy dark, 
that even the very cats ran against each other ! 

* Hans Sachse was bom 1494, and died 1576. — Ed. 



326 COLEKIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

June 23, 1834. 
Socinianism. — Unitarianism. — Fancy and Imagination, 

T^AUSTUS SOCIXrS worshipped Jesus Christ, and 
-■- said that God had given him the power of being 
omnipresent. Da^'idi, with a Httle more acnteness, 
ui'ged that mere audition or creatui'elv presence could 
not possibly justify worsliip from men; — that a man, 
how glorified soever, was no nearer God in essence 
than the vulgarest of the race. Prayer, therefore, was 
inapphcable. And how could a mun be a mediator 
between God and man ? How could a man with sins 
himseK ofi'er any compensation for, or expiation of, 
sin, unless the most arbitrary caprice were admitted 
into the counsels of God ? — And so, at last, you see, 
it was discovered by the better logicians amongst the 
Socinians, that there was no such thing as sin at all. 

It is wonderful how any Socinian can read the 
works of Philo Judseus without some pause of doubt 
in the truth of his ^^iews as to the person of Cludst. 
AVTiether Philo wrote on liis own ground as a Jew, or 
borrowed from the Christians, the testimony as to the 
then Je^vish expectation and belief, is equally strong. 
Tou know Pliilo calls the Logos vXos Q^ov, the Son of 
G(9rZ,and ayaTTrjTov reKvoVy beloved Son, He calls him 
apxi^p^v^y /liffk fj'/'iest, bevT€pos Qebs, second dii'initi/^ 
eUiDv Qeovy image of God, and describes him as 
kyyvTaT(£i fjLrjbevos ovros fxedopLov Stacm/juaros the 
nearest jpossille to God without any intervening sepa- 
ration. And there are niunerous other remarkable 
expressions of the same sort. 

My faith is tliis : — God is the Absolute "Will : it is 
his Xame and the meaning of it. It is the Hj^o- 



ITNITARI ANISM . 327 



stasis. As begetting liis own Alterity, the Jehovah^ 
the Manifested — He is the Tather ; but the Love and 
the Life — the Spirit — proceeds from both. 

I think Priestley must be considered the author of 
the modern Unitariamsm. I owe^ under God_, my 
return to the faith^ to my having gone much fui'ther 
than the Unitarians^ and so ha\dng come round to 
the other side. I can truly say, I never falsified the 
Scripture. I always told them that their interpre- 
tations of the Scripture were intolerable upon any 
principles of sound criticism ; and that, if they were 
to offer to construe the will of a neighbour as they 
did that of their Maker, they would be scouted out of 
society. I said then plainly and openly, that it was 
clear enough that John and Paul were not Unitarians. 
But at that time I had a strong sense of the repug- 
nancy of the doctrine of vicarious atonement to the 
moral being, and I thought nothing could counter- 
balance that. ^''^Yhat care I,^^ I said, ^^for the 
Platonisms of John, or the Eabbinisms of Paul? — 
My conscience revolts ! '' That was the ground of 
my Unitarianism. 

Always beheving in the government of God, I was 
a fervent Optimist. But as I could not but see that 
the present state of things was not the best, I was 
necessarily led to look forward to some future state. 

You may conceive the difference in kind between 
the Fancy aiid the Imagination in this way, — that if 
the check of the senses and the reason were withdrawn, 
the first would become delirium, and the last mania. 
The Pancy brings together images which have no con- 
nection natural or moral, but are yoked together by 



328 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

the poet by means of some accidental coincidence ; as 
in the well-known passage in Hudibras : — 

" The sun had long since in the lap 
Of Thetis taken out his nap, 
And like a lobster boyPd, the morn 
From black to red began to turn." * 

The Imagination modifies images, and gives unity to 
variety ; it sees all things in one, il piu nelV uno. 
There is the epic imagination, the perfection of which 
is in Milton ; and the dramatic, of which Shakspeare 
is the absolute master. The first gives unity by throw- 
ing back into the distance ; as after the magnificent 
approach of the Messiah to battle,t the poet, by one 
touch from himself — 

" far off their coming shone ! " — 



* Part II., c. 2, V. 29. 

t " Forth rusli'd with whirlwind sound 

The chariot of Paternal Deity, 

Flashing thick flames, wheel within wheel undrawn, 

Itself instinct with spirit, hut convoy'd 

By four cheruhic shapes ; four faces each 

Had wonderous ; as with stars their bodies all 

And wings were set with eyes ; with eyes the wheels 

Of beryl, and careering fires between ; 

Over their heads a crystal firmament, 

"Whereon a sapphire throne, inlaid with pure 

Amber, and colours of the showery arch. 

He, in celestial panoply all arm'd 

Of radiant Urim, work divinely wrought. 

Ascended ; at his right hand Victory 

Sat eagle-wing'd ; beside him hung his bow 

And quiver, with three-bolted thunder stored ; 

And from about him fierce effusion roU'd 

Of smoke, and bickering flame, and sparkles dire ; 

Attended with ten thousand thousand saints, 

He onward came ; far off their coming shone ; 

And twenty thousand (I their number heard) 

Chariots of Grod, half on each hand, were seen : 

He on the wings of cherub rode sublime 

On the crystalline sky, in sapphire throned, 

Illustrious far and wide ; but by his own 

First seen." — P. L., book vi., ver. 749, &c. 



MR. COLERTDGE^S SYSTEM. 329 

makes the whole one image. And so at the conclusion 
of the description of the appearance of the entranced 
angels, in wliich every sort of image from all the 
regions of earth and air is introduced to diversify and 
illustrate, — the reader is brought back to the single 
image by — 

" He call'd so loud, that all the hollow deep 
Of HeU resounded." * 

The dramatic imagination does not tlirow back^ but 
brings close ; it stamps all nature with one, and that 
its own, meaning, as in Lear throughout. 

At the very outset, what are we to tliink of the 
soundness of this modern system of political economy, 
the direct tendency of every rule of which is to de- 
nationalize, and to make the love of our country a 
foolish superstition ? 



June 28, 1834. 
Mr, CQleridge^s System. — Biographia Literaria. — Dissentei^s. 

70U may not understand my system, or any given 
^ part of it, — or by a determined act of wilful- 



' and caird 



His legions, angel forms, who lay intranced 

Thick as autumnal leaves that strow the hrooks 

In Vallombrosa, where th' Etrurian shades, 

High over-arch' d, embower ; or scatter" d sedge 

Afloat, when with fierce winds Orion arm'd 

Hath vex'd the Red-Sea coast, whose waves o'erthrew 

Busiris, and his Memphian Chivalry, 

While with perfidious hatred they pursued 

The sojourners of Goshen, who beheld 

From the safe shore their floating carcasses 

And broken chariot wheels ; so thick bestro-^ra, 

Abject and lost lay these, covering the flood, 

Under amazement of their hideous change. 

He caJJJd so loud, that oil the hollov; deep 

Of Bell resounded:'— F. L., book i., ver. 300, &c. 



330 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

ness, you may, even though perceiving a ray of light, 
reject it in anger and disgust :— but this I will say, — 
that if you once master it, or any part of it, you 
cannot hesitate to acknowledge it as the truth. You 
cannot be sceptical about it. 

The metaphysical disquisition at the end of the first 
volume of the ^^Biographia Literaria^^ is unformed 
and immature; — ^it contains the fragments of the 
truth, but it is not fully thought out. It is wonder- 
ful to myseK to think how infinitely more profound 
my views now are, and yet how much clearer they are 
withal. The circle is completing ; the idea is coming 
round to, and to be, the common sense. 



The generation of the modern worldly Dissenter 
was thus: Presbyterian, Arian, Socinian, and last. 
Unitarian. 

Is it not most extraordinary to see the Dissenters 
calling themselves the descendants of the old Non- 
conformists, and yet clamouring for a divorce of 
Church and State? Why — Baxter, and the other 
great leaders, would have thought a man an atheist 
who had proposed such a thing. They were rather for 
merging the State in the Church. But these our 
modern gentlemen, who are blinded by political pas- 
sion, give the kiss of alliance to the harlot of Eome, 
and walk arm in arm with those who deny the God 
that redeemed them, if so they may but wreak their 
insane antipathies on the National Church ! WeU ! 
I suppose they have counted the cost, and know what 
it is they would have, and can keep. 



LORD BROOKE. — BARROW AND DRYDEN. 331 

July 5, 1834. 
Lord Brooke. — Barrow and Dryden. — Peter Wilkins and Stothard. 
— Fielding and Richardson. — Bishop Sandford. — Roman 
Catholic Religion. 

T DO not remember a more beautiful piece of prose 
-^ in English tlian the consolation addressed by Lord 
Brooke (Fulke GreviUe) to a lady of quahty on certain 
conjugal infehcities. The diction is such that it might 
have been written now^ if we could find any one com- 
bining so thoughtful a head with so tender a heart 
and so exquisite a taste. 

Barrow often debased liis language merely to evi- 
dence liis loyalty. It was^ indeed^ no easy task for a 
man of so much genius,, and such a precise mathe- 
matical mode of thinkings to adopt even for a moment 
the slang of L^Estrange and Tom Brown; but he 
succeeded in doing so sometimes. With the excep- 
tion of such parts^ Barrow must be considered as 
closing the first great period of the English lan- 
guage. Dryden began the second. Of course there 
are numerous subdivisions. 



Peter Wilkins is to my mind a work of uncommon 
beauty; and yet Stothard^s illustrations have added 
beauties to it. If it were not for a certain tendency 
to affectation^ scarcely any praise could be too liigh 
for Stothard^s designs. They give me great pleasure. 
I beheve that Eobinson Crusoe and Peter "Wilkins 
could only have been written by islanders. No con- 
tinentahst could have conceived either tale. Davis^s 
story is an imitation of Peter Wilkins ; but there are 
many beautiful things in it ; especially his finding his 



332 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

wife crouching by the fire-side^ — she havings in liis 
absence^ plucked out all her feathers — to be like him ! 
It would require a very peculiar genius to add 
another tale^ ejttsdem generis^ to Robinson Crusoe and 
Peter Wilkins. I once projected such a thing ; but 
the difficulty of a pre-occupied ground stopped me. 
Perhaps La Motte Fouque might ejject sometliing; 
but I should fear that neither he, nor any other 
German^ could entirely understand what may be 
called the ^^ desert island" feehng. I would try the 
marvellous line of Peter Wilkins, if I attempted it, 
rather than the real fiction of Robinson Crusoe. 



"What a master of composition Pielding was ! Upon 
my word, I tliink the CEdipus Tyrannus, the Alchemist, 
and Tom Jones, the three most perfect plots ever 
planned. And how charming, how wholesome, Field- 
ing always is ! To take him up after Richardson, is 
like emerging from a sick room heated by stoves, 
into an open lawn, on a breezy day in May. 

I have been very deeply interested in the account 
of Bishop Sandford^s life, published by his son. He 
seems to have been a thorough gentleman upon the 
model of St. Paul, whose manners were the finest of 
any man^s upon record. 

I think I could have conformed to the then domi- 
nant Church before the Reformation. The errors 
existed, but they had not been riveted into peremptory 
articles of faith before the Council of Trent. If a 
Romanist were to ask me the question put to Sir 
Henry Wotton,* I should content myself by answer- 

* " Having, at his being in Rome, made acquaintance with a pleasant 
priest, who invited him, one evening, to hear their vesper music at church ; 
the priest, seeing Sir Henry stand ohscurely in a comer, sends to him by a 



EUTHAXASIA. 833 



ing. that I could not exactly say when my religion, 
as he was pleased to call it, began — but that it was 
certainly some sixty or seventy years before his^ at all 
events — wliich began at the Council of Trent. 



July 10, 1834. 
Eviihanaua, 

T A^I dying, but without expectation of a speedy 
-^ release. Is it not strange that very recently by- 
gone images, and scenes of early life, have stolen into 
my mind, like breezes blown from the spice-islands of 
Youth and Hope — those twin realities of this phantom 
world ! I do not add Love, — for what is Love but 
Youth and Hope embracing, and so seen as one? 
I say realities ; for reality is a thing of degrees, from 
the Iliad to a dream; Kai yap r ovap €k. Alos icm. 
Yet, in a strict sense, reality is not predicable at all 
of aught below Heaven. ^^ Es enim in coelis, Pater 
noster, qui tu vere es !^' Hooker wished to live to 
finish his Ecclesiastical Pohty : — so I own I wish life 
and strength had been spared to me to complete my 
Philosophy. For, as God hears me, the originating, 
continuing, and sustaining wish and design in my 
heart were to exalt the glory of his name ; and, which 
is the same tiling in other words, to promote the 
improvement of mankind. But visum aliter BeOj and 
his wiU be done. 

*** This note may well finish the present specimens. 
TThat followed was for the memory of private friends 

boy of the choir this question, writ in a small piece of paper ; — ' Where \ras 
your religion to he found before Luther ? To Trhich question, Sir Henry 
presently underwrit ; — '■ My religion -was to be found then, where yours is 
not to be found now— in the written word of God.' ''^Izaah Walton's Life of 
Sir Henry Wotton. 



334 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

only. Mr. Coleridge was then extremely ill; but 
certainly did not believe his end to be quite so near 
at hand as it was. — Ed. 



The following Recollections of Mr. Coleridge^ written 
in May^ 1811, have been also communicated to me 
by my brother, Mr. Justice Coleridge ; — 

"April 20, ISll^ at Eichmo7id. 

" We got on pohtics, and he related some curious 
facts of the Prince and Perceval. Then, adverting to 
the present state of affairs in Portugal, he said that 
he rejoiced, not so much in the mere favourable turn, 
as in the end that must now be put to the base reign 
of opinion respecting the superiority and invincible 
skill of the Prencli generals. Brave as Sir John Moore 
was, he thought him deficient in that greater and more 
essential manliness of soul, which should have made 
him not hold liis enemy in such fearful respect, and 
which should have taught him to care less for the 
opinion of the world at home. 

^^ We then got, I know not how, to German topics. 
He said that the language of their literature was en- 
tirely factitious, and had been formed by Luther from 
the two dialects. High and Low German; that he 
had made it, grammatically, most correct, more so, 
perhaps, than any other language ; it was equal to 
the Greek, except in harmony and sweetness. And 
yet the Germans themselves thought it sweet; — 
Klopstock had repeated to him an ode of his own to 
prove it, and really had deceived himself, by the force 
of association, into a belief that the harsh sounds. 



iiecollectio:ns of mr. coleridge. 335 

conveying, indeed, or being significant of, sweet images 
or thoughts, were themselves sweet. Mr. C. was asked 
what he thought of Klopstock. He answered, that 
liis fame was rapidly decHning in Germany; that an 
Englishman might form a correct notion of liim by 
uniting the moral epigram of Young, the bombast of 
Hervey, and the minute description of Eichardson. 
As to sublimity, he had, with all Germans, one rule 
for producing it; — it was, to take sometliing very 
great, and make it very small in comparison T\itli 
that which you wish to elevate. Thus, for example, 
Klopstock says, — *" As the gardener goes forth, and 
scatters from his basket seed into the garden ; so does 
the Creator scatter worlds with his right hand."* Here 
worlds, a large object, are made small in the hands of 
the Creator ; consequently, the Creator is very great. 
In short, the Germans were not a poetical nation in 
the very highest sense. Wieland was their best poet : 
his subject was bad, and his thoughts often impure; 
but his language was rich and harmonious, and his 
fancy luxuriant. Sotheb/s translation had not at 
all caught the manner of the original. But the Ger- 
mans were good metaphysicians and critics : they 
criticised on principles previously laid down ; thus, 
though they might be wrong, they were in no danger 
of being seK-contradictory, which was too often the 
case with Enghsh critics. 

" Young, he said, was not a poet to be read through 
at once. His love of point and wit had often put an 
end to his pathos and sublimity; but there were parts 
in him which must be immortal. He (Mr. C.) loved to 
read a page of Young, and walk out to think of him. 

^^ Eeturning to the Germans, he said that the state 



336 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK, 

of their religion^ when he was in Germany^, was 
really shocking. He had never met one clergyman 
a Christian; and he found professors in the universi- 
ties lecturing against the most material points in the 
Gospel. He instanced^ I think, Paulus, whose lec- 
tures he had attended. The object was to resolve 
the miracles into natural operations ; and such a 
disposition evinced was the best road to preferment. 
He severely censured Mr. Taylor^s book, in which 
the principles of Paulus were explained and insisted 
on with much gratuitous indelicacy. He then entered 
into the question of Socinianism, and noticed, as I 
recollect, the passage in the Old Testament; ^The 
people bowed their faces, and worsJiipped God and 
the king.'' He said, that all worship implied the 
presence of the object worshipped : the people wor- 
shipped, bowing to the sensuous presence of the one, 
and the conceived omnipresence of the other. He 
talked of his having constantly to defend the Church 
against the Socinian Bishop of Llandaff, Watson. 
The subject then varied to Roman CathoHcism, and 
he gave us an account of a controversy he had had 
with a very sensible priest in Sicily, on the worship 
of saints. He had driven the priest from one post 
to another, till the latter took up the ground, that 
though the saints were not omnipresent, yet God, who 
was so, imparted to them the prayers offered up, and 
then they used their interference with Him to grant 
them. ^That is, father, (said C. in reply) — excuse 
my seeming levity, for I mean no impiety — ^that is ; 
I have a deaf and dumb wife, who yet understands 
me, and I her, by signs. You have a favour to ask of 
me, and want my wife^s interference; so you com- 



RECOLLECTIONS OF ME. COLERIDGE. 337 

muuicate your request to me, who impart it to her, 
and she, by signs back again, begs me to grant it/ 
The good priest laughed, and said, ' Pojoulus vult 
deciin, et decijnatur ! ' 

" We then got upon the Oxford controversy, and 
he was decidedly of opinion that there could be no 
doubt of Copleston^s complete victory. He thought 
the Eeview had chosen its points of attack ill, as 
there must doubtless be in every institution so old 
much to reprehend and carp at. On the other hand, 
he thought that Copleston had not been so severe or 
hard upon them as he might have been; but he 
admired the critical part of his work, which he 
thought very liighly valuable, independently of the 
controversy. He wished some portion of mathe- 
matics was more essential to a degree at Oxford, as 
he thought a gentleman^s education incomplete with- 
out it, and had himseK found the necessity of getting 
up a httle, when he could ill spare the time. He 
every day more and more lamented his neglect of 
them when at Cambridge. 

^^ Then glancing off to Aristotle, he gave a very 
high character of him. He said that Bacon objected 
to Aristotle the grossness of his examples, and Davy 
now did precisely the same to Bacon: both were 
wrong ; for each of those philosophers wished to con- 
fine the attention of the mind in their works to the 
form of reasoning only, by which other truths might 
be established or ehcited, and therefore the most trite 
and common-place examples were in fact the best. 
He said that during a long confinement to his room, 
he had taken up the Schoolmen, and was astonished 
at the immense learning and acute knowledge dis- 



388 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

played by tliem ; that there was scarcely anything which 
modern philosophers had proudly brought forward as 
their own, which might not be found clearly and 
systematically laid down by them in some or other of 
their writings. Locke had sneered at the Schoolmen 
unfairly, and had raised a fooHsh laugh against them 
by citations from their Qtdd libet questions, which 
were discussed on the eves of holydays, and in which 
the greatest latitude was allowed, being considered 
mere exercises of ingenuity. We had ridiculed their 
quiddities, and why ? Had we not borrowed their 
quantity and their quality , and why then reject their 
quiddity, when every schoolboy in logic must know, 
that of everything may be asked, (Quantum est? Quale 
est? and Quid est? the last bringing you to the most 
material of all points, its individual being. He after- 
wards stated, that in a History of Speculative Phi- 
losophy which he was endeavouring to prepare for 
publication, he had proved, and to the satisfaction of 
Sir James Mackintosh, that there was nothing in 
Locke which his best admirers most admired, that 
might not be found more clearly and better laid down in 
Descartes, or the old Schoolmen ; not that he was him- 
self an impKcit disciple of Descartes, though he thought 
that Descartes had been much misinterpreted. 

^^ When we got on the subject of poetry and 
Southey, he gave us a critique of the Curse of 
Kehama, the fault of which he thought consisted in 
the association of a plot and a machinery so very wild 
with feelings so sober and tender : but he gave the 
poem high commendation, admired the art displayed 
in the employment of the Hindu monstrosities, and 
begged us to observe the noble feeling excited of the 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 339 

superiority of virtue over vice ; that Keliama went on, 
from the beginning to the end of the poem, increasing 
in power, whilst Kailyal gradually lost her hopes and 
her protectors ; and yet by the time we got to the 
end, we had arrived at an utter contempt and even 
carelessness of the power of evil, as exempUfied in the 
almighty Eajah, and felt a complete confidence in the 
safety of the unprotected virtue of the maiden. This 
he thought the very great merit of the poem. 

^^ Wlien we walked home with him to the inn, he 
got on the subject of the English Essay for the year 
at Oxford*, and thought some consideration of the 
corruption of language should be introduced into it. 
It originated, he thought, in a desire to abbreviate 
aU expression as much as possible ; and no doubt, if 
in one word, mtliout violating idiom, I can express 
what others have done in more, and yet be as fully 
and easily understood, T have manifestly made an 
improvement ; .but if, on the other hand, it becomes 
harder, and takes more time to comprehend a thought 
or image put in one word by Apuleius than when 
expressed in a whole sentence by Cicero, the saving 
is merely of pen and ink, and the alteration is 
evidently a corruption."''' 



April 21. — Richmond. 
*'T)EEOEE breakfast we went into Mr. Ma/s 
^^ delightful book-room, where he was again 
silent in admiration of the prospect. After breakfast, 
we walked to church. He seemed full of calm piety, 
and said he always felt the most delightful sensations 

* On Etymology. 

z2 



340 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

in a Sunday church-yard^ — that it struck him as if 
God had given to man fifty-two springs in every 
year. After the service^ he was vehement against the 
sermon,, as common-place^ and invidious in its tone 
towards the poor. Then he gave many texts from 
the lessons and gospel of the day^ as affording fit 
subjects for discourses. He ridiculed the absurdity 
of refusing to beHeve everything that you could not 
understand; and mentioned a rebuke of Dr. Parr^^s 
to a man of the name of Frith^ and that of another 
clergyman to a young man^ who said he would believe 
nothing which he could not understand : — ^ Then, 
young man, your creed will be the shortest of any 
man^s I know."* 

" As we walked up Mr. Cambridge's meadows to- 
wards Twickenham, he criticised Johnson and Gray 
as poets, and did not seem to allow them high merit. 
The excellence of verse, he said, was to be untrans- 
latable into any other words without detriment to the 
beauty of the passage ; — the position of a single word 
could not be altered in Milton without injury. Gra/s 
personifications, he said, were mere printer's devils' 
personifications — persons with a capital letter, abstract 
quaUties with a small one. He thought Collins had 
more genius than Gray, who was a singular instance 
of a man of taste, poetic feeling, and fancy, without 
imagination. He contrasted Dryden's opening of the 
10th satire of Juvenal with Johnson's : — 

^^ * Let observation, with extensive view, 
Survey mankind from Ganges to Peru.' 

which was as much as to say, — 

"^Let observation with extensive observation observe man- 
kind.* 



RECOLLECTIONS OF MR. COLERIDGE. 341 

" After dinner he told us a humorous story of his 
enthusiastic fondness for Quakerism^ when he was at 
Cambridge, and his attending one of their meetings, 
wliich had entirely cured him. When the little 
children came in, he was in raptures with them, and 
descanted upon the delightful mode of treating them 
now, in comparison with what he had experienced in 
cliildhood. He lamented the haughtiness Avith which 
Englishmen treated all foreigners abroad, and the 
facility with wliich our government had always given 
up any people wliich had allied itseK to us, at the 
end of a war ; and he particularly remarked upon our 
abandonment of Minorca. These two tilings, he said, 
made us universally dishked on the Continent; though, 
as a people, most higlily respected. He thought a 
war with America inevitable; and expressed his 
opinion, that the United States were unfortnnate in 
the prematureness of their separation from this coun- 
try, before they had in themselves the materials of 
moral society — before they had a gentry and a learned 
class, — the former looking backwards, and giving the 
sense of stability — the latter looking forwards, and 
regulating the feehngs of the people. 

'^ Afterwards, in the drawing-room, he sat down by 
Professor Rigaud, with whom he entered into a dis- 
cussion of Kant^s System of Metaphysics. The httle 
knots of the company were speedily silent : Mr. C.^s 
voice grew louder ; and abstruse as the subject was, 
yet his language was so ready, so energetic, and so 
eloquent, and his illustrations so very neat and appo- 
site, that the ladies even paid liim the most solicitous 
and respectful attention. They were really entertained 
with Kant's Metaphysics ! At last I took one of them. 



342 COLEEIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

a very sweet singer^ to the piano-forte; and^ when 
there was a pause, she began an ItaHan air. She was 
anxious to please him, and he was enraptured. His 
frame quivered with emotion, and there was a titter 
of uncommon delight on his countenance. When it 
was over, he praised the singer warmly, and prayed 
she might finish those strains in heaven ! 

^^ This is nearly all, except some anecdotes, which 
I recollect of our meeting with this most interesting, 
most wonderful man. Some of his topics and argu- 
ments I have enumerated; but the connection and 
the words are lost. And nothing that I can say can 
give any notion of his eloquence and manner, — of 
the hold which he soon got on his audience — of the 
variety of his stores of information — or, finally, of 
the artlessness of his habits, or the modesty and tem- 
per with wliich he listened to, and answered arguments, 
contradictory to his own."'"' — J. T. C. 



The following address has been printed before ; but 
it cannot be too widely circulated, and it will form an 
appropriate conclusion to this volume. 

To Adam Steinmetz K . 

My deaPo Godchild, 

I offer up the same fervent prayer for you 
now, as I did kneeling before the altar, when you 
were baptized into CMst, and solemnly received as a 
living member of his spiritual body, the Church. 

Years must pass before you will be able to read, 
with an understanding heart, what I now write. But 
I trust that the all-gracious God, the Father of our 



HECOLLECTIONS OF Mil. COLERIDGE. 343 

Lord Jesus Clmst^ the Father of Mercies^ who by 
his oiily-begotten Son (all mercies in one sovereign 
mercy !) has redeemed yon from the evil ground^ and 
willed yon to be born ont of darkness^ but into light — 
out of death, but into life — out of sin, but into righte- 
ousness, even into the '^ Lord our Eighteousness ;' I 
trust that He will graciously hear the prayers of your 
dear parents, and be with you as the spirit of health 
and growth in body and mind ! 

My dear Godchild! — You received from Christ^s 
minister at the baptismal font, as your Christian name, 
the name of a most dear friend of your father'' s, and 
who was to me even as a son, the late Adam Steinmetz, 
whose fervent aspiration, and ever paramount aim, even 
from early youth, was to be a Christian in thought, 
word, and deed — ^in will, mind, and affections. 

I too, your Godfather, have known what the enjoy- 
ments and advantages of this life are, and what the 
more refined pleasures which learning and iutellectual 
power can bestow ; and with all the experience that 
more than threescore years can give, I now, on the 
eve of my departure, declare to you, (and earnestly 
pray that you may hereafter live and act on the con- 
viction,) that health is a great blessing — competence 
obtained by honourable industry a great blessing, — 
and a great blessing it is to have kind, faithful, and 
lovdng friends and relatives ; but that the greatest of aU 
blessings, as it is the most ennobling of all privileges, 
is to be indeed a Cliristian. But I have been like- 
wise, through a large portion of my later life, a sufferer, 
sorely afflicted with bodily pains, languors, and mani- 
fold infirmities ; and, for the last three or four years, 
have, with few and brief intervals, been confined to a 



344 COLERIDGE^S TABLE TALK. 

sick-room^ and^ at this moment^ in great weakness 
and heaviness^ write from a sick-bed^ hopeless of a 
recovery, yet without prospect of a speedy removal ; 
and I, thus on the very brink of the grave, solemnly 
bear witness to you, that the Almighty Redeemer, 
most gracious in his promises to them that truly seek 
him, is faithful to perform what he hath promised, 
and has preserved, under all my pains and infirmities, 
the inward peace that passeth all understanding, with 
the supporting assurance of a reconciled God, who 
will not withdraw his spirit from me in the conflict, 
and in his own time will deliver me from the Evil 
One! 

O, my dear Godchild ! eminently blessed are those 
who begin early to seek, fear, and love their God, 
trusting wholly in the righteousness and mediation of 
their Lord, Eedeemer, Saviour, and everlasting High 
Priest, Jesus Christ ! 

preserve this as a legacy and bequest from your 
unseen Godfather and friend, 

S. T. Coleridge. 

Grove, Highgate, 

July 13, 1834. 

He died on the 25th day of the same month. 



INDEX. 



Abraham, 73. 

Abuse, Eloquence of, 83. 

Acoustics, 31. 

Acts, Origin of, 75. 

Adiaphori, 175. 

Advocate, Duties and Needs of an, 
148. 

.^schylus, Sophocles, and Euri- 
pides, 260. 

Alchemy, 161. 

All and the Whole, 202. 

America, United States of, 229. 

American Union, Northern and 
Southern States of the, 201. 

Americans, the, 84. 

Anarchy, Mental, 117. 

Ancient Mariner, 86. 

Animal Being, Scale of, 45. 

Ant and Bee, 62. 

Architecture, Gothic, 256. 

Ariosto and Tasso, 48. 

Aristotle, 101. 

Army and Navy, House of Com- 
mons appointing the Officers of 
the, 214. 

Article, Ninth, 202. 

Asgill, 133, 248. 
— and Defoe, 173. 

Astrology, 161. 

Atheist, 307. 

Autumn Day, 285. 



B. 



Bacon, 118. 

Ball, Sir Alexander, 315. 
Baptismal Service, 193. 
Barrow and Dryden, 331. 
Bartram's Travels, 36. 



Baxter, 47. 

Beaumont and Fletcher, 42, 212, 

312. 
Beaumont and Fletcher's Dramas, 

259. 
Beauty, 156, 300. 
Behmen, Jacob, 49. 
Bentley, 99. 
Berkeley, 50. 

Bertram, Character of, 259. 
Bestial Theoiy, 258. 
Bible, Study of the, 97. 

— Version of the, 43. 
Biblical Commentators, 65> 
Biographia Literaria, 330. 
Bitters and Tonics, 81. 
Black, 173. 

Black Colonel, 63. 

Blumenbach and Kant's Races, 33. 

Books of Moses, Genuineness of, 79. 

Boswell, 265. 

Bourrienne, 102. 

Bowyer, 196. 

British Schoolmen, 59. 

Brooke, Lord, 331. 

Brown and Darwin, 62. 

Bull and Waterland, 44. 

Burke, 10, 227, 265. 

Burnet, 99. 

Buonaparte, 126. 

Byron, Lord, 2. 

— and H. Walpole's " Mys- 

terious Mother," 313. 

— his Versification, and Don 
Juan, 32. 



Csesarean Operation, 200. 
Cambridge Petition to admit Dis- 
senters, 316. 



346 



INDEX. 



Canning, 15, 70, 102. 
Capital, 238. 
Catholicity, 94. 
Cavalier Slang, 263. 
Character, Differences of, 33. 
Charles I., 254. 
Chaucer, 310. 

Children, Gracefulness of, 158. 
Chilling-vrorth, 131. 
Christ, Divinity of, 79. 
Christ's Hospitr.L 196. 
Christian Sabbath, 318. 
Christianity, 12, 

— Scope of, 298. 

Church, 110, 157, 159. 

— High Prizes and Eevenues 

of the, 320. 

— National, 322. 

— of England, 204. 

— of Rome, 19, 235. 
Churchmen, 215. 
Church Singing, 90. 
Citizens and Christians, 175. 
Claudian, 279, 290. 
Clergy, Celibacy of the, 235. 
Coleridge's (Mr.) System, 329. 
Colonization, 238. 

Colours, 171. 

— Non-perception of, 49. 
Commons, House of, 120. 

— the Reformed House of. 
228, 241. 
Compounds, Latin, 290. 
Consolation in Distress, 284. 
Constantine, 239. 
Constitution, English, 175. 
Com Laws, 317, 324. 
Coronation Oaths, 216, 324. 
Crabbe and Southey, 309. 
Cramp, Charm for, 179. 
Craniology, 43. 
Crisis, 162. 



D. 

Dancing, English and Greek, 31. 
Daniel, 311. 
Davy, Sir H., 14, 
Democracy, 76, 110, 176. 

— with Slavery, 230. 
Devotional Spirit, 305. 
De vi Minimorum, 177. 
Dictation and Inspiration, 163. 
Diction of the Old and New Testa- 
ment Version, 281. 
Diplomatists, Modern, 286. 
Disfranchisement, 160. 
Dissenters, 157, 322, 330. 
Diversions of Purley, 65. 
Divines, Old, 203. 
Divinity, 217. 



Dobrizhofifer, 190. 

Dog, 62, 158. 

Don Quixote, 194. 

Douw's (Gerard) "Schoolmaster," 

and Titian's " Venus," 257. 
Dramatists, the Old, 226. 
Drayton and Daniel, 145. 
Dreams, 91. 

— and Ghosts, Difference 
between Stories of, 21. 

Dryden, 297. 

— and Pope, 192. 

Dual, Neuter plural, and Verb sin- 
gular, 180. 



E. 

Education, 294. 
Egyptian Antiquaries, 29. 
Eldon's (Lord) Doctrine as to 

Grammar Schools, 75. 
Electricity, 38. 
Elegy, 294. 
Energy of Man and other Animals, 

35. 
England, 139. 

— and Holland, 136. 
English and German, 198. 
Envy, 50. 

Epidemic Disease, 168. 
Epistles to the Ephesians and Co- 
lossians, 82. 

— to the Hebrews, 12. 

— to the Romans, 252. 
Erasmus, 253. 

Etymology of the final Ive, 276. 
Eucharist, the, 76. 
Euripides, 260. 
Euthanasia, 333. 
Evangelicals, Mock, 285. 



Faith, 270. 

— Articles of, 304. 

— and Belief, 189. 
Fancy and Imagination, 327. 
Fatalism and Providence, 288. 
Fathers, the, 48. 

Faust, 206. 

Fees, Barristers' and Physicians', 

200. 
Fielding and Richardson, 332. 
Fine Arts, Patronage of the, 127. 
Flaccus, Valerius, 290. 
Flogging, 83. 
Food, 242. 

Fox and Pitt, 174, 251. 
French, the, 134. 

— Gendarmerie, 111. 



INDEX. 



347 



French Hereditary Peerage, Abo- 
lition of the, 150. 



G. 

Galileo, Newton, Kepler, Bacon, 

118. 
Galvanism, 38, 136. 
Gas, Hydro- carbonic, 81. 
Gender of the Sun in German, 66. 
Genius, 50, 156. 
Genius, Criterion of, 192. 

— Feminine, 161. 

— Metaphysical, 194. 

— of the Spanish and Ita- 
lians, 171. 

German, 249. 

— Blank Verse, 323. 

— and English, 293. 
Ghosts, 8. 

Gibbon, 273. 

Gifford's Massinger, 226. 

Giotto, 99. 

Gnosis. 94, 165. 

God, Proof of Existence of, 307. 

God's Providence, 250. 

Goethe, 207, 249. 

Good and the True, the, 135. 

Government, 110, 121, 123. 

Grammar, 38. 

Gray and Cotton, 296. 

Great Minds androgynous, 199. 

— Poets, good Men, 281. 
Greek, 180. 

— Italian, and English, pure 

Ages of, 47. 

— Accent and Quantity, 282. 

— Drama, 10. 

— Particles, 289. 
Grey, Earl, 122. 



H. 

Hackef s Life of Archbishop Wil- 
liams, 254. 
Hahnemann, 177. 
Hall, Captain B., 229. 

— and the Americans, 108. 
Hamlet, 40. 

Hampden's Speech, 241. 
Harmony, 170. 
Heat, 136. 
Hebre^r, 33, 281. 
Hermesianax, 291. 
Herodotus, 272. 
Hesiod, 194. 
Hieronimo, 223. 
History, 156. 

— Jewish, 34. 
Hobbism, 142. 



Holland and Belgium, 139. 

— and the Dutch, 63. 
Homer, 71, 182. 
Homeric Heroes in Shakspeare, 

297. 
Hooker, 51, 91. 
Hooker and Bull, 270. 
Horner, 174, 

Humour and Genius, 280. 
Hypothesis, 255. 
Hysteria, 81. 



lapetic and Semitic, 33. 

Ideal Tory and Whig, 158. 

Ideal Truths, Reverence for, 246. 

Ideas, 51. 

Imitation and Copy, 265. 

Incarnation, 293. 

Inherited Disease, 200. 

Insects, 62. 

Interest, Monied, 102. 

Investigation, Methods of, 232. 

Ireland, Union with, 154, 204. 

Irish Church, 154. 

Iron, 136. 

Irving, 73. 

Isaac, 74. 

Italy, Eoman Conquest of, 236. 



Jacob, 74. 

Jacobins, 68. 

James I., 248. 

Jerusalem, Destruction of, 172, 

291. 
Jews, 53, 103, 271. 

— Conversion of the, 54. 

— Division of the Scripture, 

193. 

— in Poland, 55. 
Job, Book of, 84. 
Johnson, Dr., 265, 297. 

— his Political Pamphlets, 

274. 

— the Whig, 247. 
Jonson, Ben, 42, 213, 311. 
Junius, 264. 

Juries, 200. 



K. 

Kant's Attempt, 308. 

— Races of Mankind, 7. 
Kean, 14. 
Keats, 195. 
Keenness and Subtlety, 148. 



348 



INDEX. 



Kemble, Jolin, 2. 
Kepler, 118. 
Knowledge, 52. 
Kotzebue, 10, 



L. 

Lakes, Scotch and English, 115. 
Lamb, C, 189. 
Land and Money, 231. 
Landholders, Duty of, 220. 
Landor's (W. S.) Poetry, 300. 
Laud, 97. 

Laughter: Farce and Tragedy, 285. 
Lavacrum Pallados, 294. 
Legislation, Iniquitous, 106. 
Leo X., 105. 

Lewis's Jamaica Journal, 313. 
Life, Constitutional and Function- 
al, 80. 
Liturgy, English, 117. 
Logic, 113. 

— Character of the Age for, 9. 

— of Ideas and of Syllogisms, 
300. 

Logos, the, 13. 

" Lord, the," in the English Ver- 
sion of the Psalms, 277. 
Love, 41, 50, 75, 246. 

— and Friendship opposed, 116. 
Love's Labour Lost, 224. 
Lucan, 290. 

Luther, 47, 177, 246, 253. 
Lyell's Geology, 256. 



M. 

Machinery, 238. 
Mackintosh, Sir James, 14. 
Madness, 61, 189. 
Magnetism, 38. 
Malta, 315. 

Man cannot be stationary, 288. 
— Fall of, 61. 
Man's Freedom, 250. 
Mandeville's Fable of the Bees, 

258. 
Manners under Edward III., Ei- 

chard II., and Henry YIIL, 254. 
Marriage, 116. 

— Parental Control in, 32. 

— of Cousins, 33. 
Martin, 88. 

Mason's Poetry, 201. 
Massinger, 213, 221, 312. 
Materialism, 7. 
Mathews, 3. 

Measure for Measure, 42. 
Medicine, 242. 
Medicines, Specific, 81. 



Men, 62. 

Messenger of the Covenant, 299. 

Messiah, 53. 

Metre, Modern, 113. 

Miguel, Dom, and Dom Pedro, 

250. 
Milesian Tales, 69. 
Milton, 30, 71, 262, 266. 

— and Sidney, 176. 
Milton's Disregard of Painting, 

192. 

— Egotism, 278. 

— Latin Poems, 295. 
Ministers and the Reform Bill. 

159. 
Monarchy or Democracy, Prospect 

of, 228. 
Monro, Su' T., 70. 
Mosaic Miracles, 56. 

— Prophecies, 79. 
Motives and Impulses, 80. 
Music, 267. 

— Ear and Taste for, different, 
117. 

Musical Glasses, some Men like, 
307. 



N. 

Napier, 125. 

National Colonial Character and 
Naval Discipline, 137. 
— Debt, 16, 219. 

Nations, Characteristic Tempera- 
ment of, 289. 

Negro Emancipation, 251, 253. 

Nervous Weakness, 270. 

New Testament Canon, 165. 

Newton, 118, 266. 

Nitrous Oxide, 62. 

Nominalists and Eealists, 58. 

Northern and Southern States, 
230. 

Norwegians, 303. 



Oath, Coronation, 216, 324. 

Oaths, 82. 

Obstruction, 243. 

Origen, 307. 

OtheUo, Character of, 1, 39. 



P. 

Painting, 52, 100, 266. 
Pantheism, 57. 

— and Idolatry, 21. 

Papacy, 322. 



rNDEX. 



349 



Papacy, the, and the Reformation, 
104. 

— and the Schoolmen, 239. 
Paradise Lost, 292. 
Park, Professor, 175. 
Parliamentary Privilege, 4. 
Party Spirit, 96. 
Penal Code in Ireland, 215. 
Penu, Granville, and the Deluge, 

30. 
Pentameter, Greek and Latin, 2S5. 
Permanency and Progression of 

Nations, 6. 
Persius, 291. 

Persons and Things, 155. 
Peter Simple and Tom Cringle's 

Log, 309. 
Phantom Portrait, 25. 
Philanthropists, 271. 
Philosopher's ordinary Language, 

199. 
Philosophy, Greek, 114. 

— Moral, 165. 

— Mr. Coleridge's Sys- 

tem of, 146, 188. 

— of yomig Men of the 
present Day, 111. 

Pictures, 128. 
Pilgrim's Progress. 88. 
Pirates, 161. 
Plants, 62. 
Plato, 100. 

— and Xenophon, 10, 29. 
Plotinus, 114. 

Poem, Epic, 172, 292. 
Poetic Promise, 57. 
Poetical Filter, 295. 
Poetry, 112, 268. 

— Persian and Arabic, 69. 
Poison, 242. 

Polarity, Moral Law of, 167. 
Political Action, the two Modes of, 
143. 
— Economy, Modem, 217, 

325. 
Polonius, 40. 
Poor Laws, 16. 
Popedom, 47. 
Prayer, 89. 

Preaching Estempore, 203. 
Presbyterians, Independents, and 

Bishops, 97. 
Principle, Greatest Happiness, 141. 
Principles and Facts, 182. 

— and Maxims, 41. 
Professions and Trades, 217. 
Propertius, 290. 
Property Tax, 220. 
Prophecies of the Old Testament, 

52. 
Prophecy, 299. 
Prose and Poetry, 48. 



Prose and Verse, 264. 
Prudentius, 291. 
Psalms, Translation of the, 85. 
Puritans and Cavaliers, 97. 
— and Jacobins, 184. 



Q- 

Quacks, 200. 

Quakerism, Modern, 305. 
Quakers, 231, 271. 
Quarantine, 169. 



Eabelais, 98. 

— and Luther, 7. 
Eaffles, Sir S., 70. 
Eainbow, 31. 

Eeason and Understanding, 14, 72. 
Eeasoner, a, 308. 
Eedemption, 293. 

Eeform of the House of Commons, 
18. 

— Bill, 162. 

— — Conduct of Ministers 
on the, 151. 

Eeformation, 50, 119. 

— English, 93, 109. 

Eeligion, 153. 
Eeligion gentilises, 64. 

— of the Greeks, 29. 

— Eoman Catholic, 332. 

— Eomish, 135. 
Representation, Popular, 124. 

— Direct, 275. 

Eestoration, 49. 
Review, Principles of a, 95. 
Revolution, 252. 

— Belgian, 118. 

— French, 108, 186. 

— Intellectual, 170. 
Rhenferd, 48. 

Roman Conquest, 239. 

— Empire, Key to the D&- 

cline of the, 274. 

— Mind, 178. 

— Catholics, 35. 

— Catholic Emancipation, 
323. 

Rosetti on Dante, 285. 



S. 

Sallust, 272, 
Sandford, Bishop, 332. 
Sanskrit, 194. 
Sarpi, Paul, 36. 
Scanderbeg, 47. 



350 



INDEX. 



Scarlett, Sir J., 257. 

Schemes, Spinozistic and Hebrew, 

34. 
Schiller, 207. 
Schiller's Robbers, 2. 

— Versification, 323. 
Schmidt, 183. 

Schools, Infant, 187. 

— Public, 268. 
Scotch and English, 191. 

— Kirk and Irving, 278. 

— Novels, 2. 
Scott, Michael, 207. 

— and Coleridge, 269. 
Scott's Novels, 298. 
Sectarianism, 307. 
Seneca, 100. 
Shakspeare, 71, 223, 226, 311. 

— in Minimis, 35. 

Shakspeare' s Intellectual Action, 
309. 

— Sonnets, 245. 
Sicily, 314. 

Sidney, Sir P., 249. 

Sin and Sins, 202. 

Smith, Robert, 15. 

Society, best State of, 199. 

Soeinianism, 28, 326. 

Socrates, 114. 

Solomon, 33, 188. 

Sophocles, 260. 

Southey, 126. 

Southey's Life of Bunyan, 96. 

Speech, Parts of, 37. 

Spenser, 39. 

Spinosa, 50, 59, 171. 

Spurzheim, 44. 

— and Craniology, 106, 
St. John, 94. 

St. John's Gospel, 11. 

— Chap. xix. Ver. 11, 77. 

— Chap. iii. Yer. 4, 163. 
St. Paul's Melita, 197. 

State, 157. 

— a, 155. 

— Idea of a, 110. 
Statesmen, 227. 
Statius, 290. 
Steinmetz, 195. 
Stella, 106. 
Sterne, 279. 

Style, 263. 

— Algernon Sydney's, 48. 

— Modem, 170. 
Sublime and Nonsense, 307. 
Sublimity, 188. 
Sufaction, 255. 

Superstition of Maltese, Sicilians, 

and Italians, 132. 
Swift, 98, 106. 
Sympathy of Old G-reek and Latin 

with English, 178. 



Talent and Genius, 80. 

Talented, 181. 

Taxation, 274. 

Taylor, Jeremy, 51, 91. 

Tennyson's Poems, 236. 

Tertullian, 94, 115. 

Thelwall, 105. 

Theory, 255. 

Theta, 181. 

Things are finding their Level, 

249. 
Thomas h, Becket, 47. 
Thucydides, 272. 

— and Tacitus, 112. 

Tibullus, 290. 
Times of Charles L, 298. 
Toleration, 301. 
Tooke, Home, 65, 68, 174, 276. 
Travels, Modem, 293. 
Trinity, the, 44, 53, 73, 293. 
Truths and Maxims, 144. 



U. 

Understanding, the, 36. 

Undine, 88. 

Unitarianism, 165, 327. 
Universal Suffrage, 275. 
Universities, 323. 



V. 

Valcknaer, 182. 

Varro, 114. 

Vico, 171. 

Virgil, 30, 194. 

Virtue and Liberty, 252. 

Von Humboldt, Baron, 286. 

Vote, Right of Women to, 275. 

Vowels and Consonants, 282. 

Vox Populi, Vox Dei, 173. 



W. 

Walkerite Creed, 65. 
War, 179. 

— Civil, of the Seventeenth 

Century, 240. 
Wedded Love in Shakspeare and 

his contemporary Dramatists, 

236. 
Wellington, Duke of, 101, 324. 
Wetherell's (Sir Charles) Speech, 

322. 
Whigs, Conduct of the, 17. 
Wicliffe, 246. 



INDEX. 



351 



Wilkins, Peter, and Stothard, 331. 

William III., 50. 

Wilson, 243. 

Wit and Madness, 237. 

Witch of Endor, 28. 

Women, Characterlessness of, 116. 

— Old, 127. 

— and Men, 65. 

Words and Names of Things, 72. 
Wordsworth, 184, 207. 



Works, Chronological Arrange- 
ment of, 301. 

Working to better one's condition, 
250. 

Worlds, Plurality of, 308. 



Z. 



Zendavesta, 20. 



THE E^'D. 



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